I've evolved a strategy for my new eReader: this is where I'll indulge my occasional guilty 'junk fiction' pleasure. The latest Anne Rice seemed like a perfect place to start. What can I say? She's always been a writer of purple prose, but is no one editing her any more? Even a competent copy editor could - and should - have caught the most egregious of her grammatical and usage errors, split long and ineffective sentences into two, and cleaned this one up a bit. But no. This was a horrific novel, and not in the good sense of horrific. Plot is usually Rice's strong suit, but even that strength seems to have deserted her. As for characterization - gone are the moral but tortured vampires of her vampire series, gone are the feisty women of the witches series. The book fails on the historical fiction front as well - there just isn't the detail one's come to expect in the Rome episodes here. Give this one a miss unless you're looking for a read that disappoints on every level.