adastrame's reviews
263 reviews

I thought it started out a bit slow, plus the story was hard to keep track of with the ever-changing narrations/timelines. But it gets interesting at some point and is a somewhat decent Doctorow.

I didn't find it as brilliant or captivating as my last Heitz, but it's a fun read. Heitz has as always very well researched the folklore and history surrounding this story and turned it into a unique universe of dragons among us.

Beautiful writing style and a very interesting story, though I felt that some of the chapters in between dragged a bit on..

Now the wait for book 3 begins...

Unfortunately I read it in German (long time ago), which probably doesn't do it justice.

A rich old archaeologist digs up the mummy of Ramses the Third, a former great king of Egypt and rumored immortal. Despite all the written warnings in the tomb, the archeologist takes the mummy to his home in England, where slowly but surely Ramses awakens from his 2000 year slumber. The inevitable happens as he falls in love with the archaeologists daughter, and eventually screws up.

The plot of this book is very stale, even a little disappointing. Part 1 is still sort of OK, but when the major events in Part 2 start happening, you just want to continually slap your forehead in disapproval. How can he be so stupid? Stupid stupid stupid!

The concept of immortality in this book is interesting - rather than being strong in the darkness as her vampires are, these immortals gain power from the sun and they ARE indestructible - not even fire or grinding their bodies can kill them. So they ARE doomed to walk the earth until this world ends, very much in a Captain Jack Harkness way.

I admit that Anne Rice's way of storytelling and her way of describing those handsome, radiant characters is quite enchanting, but with this book she could have done a better job on the general storyline. Especially the ending is a huge disappointment. It's an open ending, not 'ending' anything, and it promises more, but as far as I know there's nothing more. Anne Rice didn't write a continuation of this story since 1989 and I suppose she never will.

Somewhat unsatisfying conclusion to the trilogy. 80% of the plotlines are unfinished and I really wonder what happened there. Also, the potential of the mythology hasn't really been used, instead the book just focuses on it's vast array of present-realm plotlines and places. The characters hop around the world so much that it's really hard to keep track of.

Though it's disappointing as a final volume, it's probably still an interesting trilogy for fans of human rights, privacy and 1984/Big Brother paranoiacs.