A welcome return to narration by the Brat Prince of the Vampire Chronicles, the most excellent Lestat, as through the friendship he struck up with Quinn Blackwood in the last entry, he gets entangled with the lives and fates of the Mayfairs.

The writing style has changed somewhat since the previous entries, and I must admit I found it more than a little incongruous at first to be hearing the ever articulate and flowery Lestat using words like yo, cool and dude (while flouncing around in his lacy cuffs), but this soon was set aside as I got sucked into the story - loving the eccentricity of these old wealthy families, the relationship he builds with Mona and actively despising Rowan. I never warmed to Rowan over the course of The Mayfair Witches and found her the least compelling character of the series, but my lack of interest for her has slowly crystallised into a severe dislike the more she crops up in Rice's works. I really do not see what everyone thinks is so bloody fabulous about her (apart from Mona, atta girl!) and think that both Lestat and Michael deserve far better.

Once again the real lure here isn't so much the story, which nicely wraps up the fates of the Taltos and enfolds them back into the busom of the Mayfair family, but Lestat himself who has almost stopped being a fictional character for me but an (un)living creature, chock full of personality, both flawed and utterly fabulous. He's never better than when pissed off, and I can only hope that one day someone will call me a roaring revenant from Hell and a maddening little miscreant with such piqued panache.