The Vampire Armand finished with a tantalising moment - the Vampire Lestat rising from the dead in present-day New Orleans to walk again among Anne Rice's unforgettable undead. Now Lestat lives again but in a twilight world of music and memory.

In this dazzling new volume of the Vampire Chronicles it is Lestat's charismatic friend and coeval Louis de Pointe du Lac (originating in the eighteenth-century France and Interview with the Vampire and now takes centre stage, tortured by the memory of the child vampire Claudia, whom he loved and lost.

With the help of David Talbot, ultimate fixer from the secret Talamasca organisation, Louis appeals to Merrick, the beautiful mixed-rave daughter of the New Orleans Mayfair clan - from the wrong side of the tracks. To save Louis' sanity, Merrick must call up the ghost of Claudia - however dangerous this may be. But there are other spirits who will not lie still, and her search takes her close to the edge, through blood and terror, voodoo and violence.

Sweeping from New Orleans to the Brazilian jungle, this is vampire literature at its most thrilling, seductive and superb.

 

 
I'm so behind with the Vampire Chronicles, and that's a shame as I used to really like them. I think I got a little irritated by the style during Memnoch the Devil, which probably explains why it's taken me so long to seek out the next book...which I now realise this isn't. It doesn't help that I leant Memnoch to someone who then didn't give it back, so I can't really revisit it to refresh my memory as to where I am. It will take me a long time to get to this, but I'm sure one day I'll pick up where I left off with all Anne Rice's vampires.