23 Should I buy/read VC or Prism of the Night? (Anne Rice FAQ)
Description
This article is from the Anne Rice FAQ, by Laura Ann lat13@columbia.edu with numerous contributions by others.
23 Should I buy/read VC or Prism of the Night? (Anne Rice FAQ)
This question cannot be answered without giving an opinion of
the two books. Originally I only included my opinion of the
books but this caused something of a stir on alt.books.anne-rice
since it was felt that giving only one opinion put too much of
a slant on things. Since I agreed with that sentiment (and since
Ian offered so nicely) here you will find two differing opinions
about VC and Prism of the Night. Please keep in mind that these
are only opinions and you can take them or leave them. If you
have any questions, please direct them to the person who wrote
each section.
Ian Wellock:
I liked VC. It has three main sections, the Entries
A to Z, which covers a total of 484 pages (!), a Time Line,
which starts at 'around 4000 B.C.' and goes up to 1992,
the time of TotBT's publication, and also a Vampire Atlas,
with some fascinating maps which is a nice touch for those
of us mere mortals who have never been to New Orleans.
There are a few errors, but I regard these as minor.
(Details can be had upon request). For me, far and away
the best reason for reading this book is the collection and
cross-referencing of all the little items into many different
subject areas, which, if you can't remember when a certain
character made an appearance, or find out more about the
Talamasca, is invaluable. I even like to sit down and just
read the thing, and thereby pick up little snippets of
information that perhaps were not immediately obvious.
Laura Troise:
I didn't like VC. For all the good that it offers (what is
listed above) it offers a lot of garbage as well. It should
be retitled "Katherine Ramsland's Interpretation of the
Vampire Chronicles." Her opinion invades *everything*.
This would be fine (after all, *my* opinion is all over this
FAQ) except that *she gets things wrong while giving her
opinion*. She has a Ph.D. in philosophy and has studied
Jungian psychology but there's a very strong Freudian view
throughout the book. She rips apart characters that she
doesn't like and ignores what really happened in the books.
Plus she gets basic facts wrong (like the names of
characters) so you never know what bits of information to
trust. VC is a fine book but it is in no way the "Official
Guide to the Vampire Chronicles." It contains too many
errors to be officially anything.
As for Prism of the Night, this is a slightly better book in
comparison. Katherine's interpretation of Anne's books is
still in there but you can pretty much ignore it while
reading about Anne's life. The only problem is that
Katherine is not a good writer (and I've had published
authors agree with me on this) so you have to slog through a
lot of bad prose to get to the gems of Anne's life.
Continue to:
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