I liked it well enough.

There was a lot of skipping around. There was a lot of poetry in the beginnings of chapters written by "Stan Rice" who I assume is Anne's husband? I just skipped over all of that.

There was a lot in the book that I thought was superfluous. Such as the story of Baby Jenks. It was merely an obstacle in my path to finding out about Akasha and the truth to the beginnings of all of Anne Rice's vampires.

I liked the stories that involved Jesse and I liked the stories that involved Khayman. Khayman's story actually made me laugh as he sought to entertain himself by dressing up in the stereotypical outfits and such.

The best part of the whole book was The Legend of the Twins. Anne Rice provoked my interest with the dreams. At first I had no idea what they meant, but I knew they had to be about the beginning. She teased me with these dreams being shared by all of the vampires whose stories we read in Queen of the Damned. And finally she gave them to me. But she gave them to me in parts.

She interrupted the story of the Twins with Lestat and Akasha's adventures which were boring. Although I quite like how Akasha thinks. I like her grand design for the future and the reason she awoke. I was sad to see about her end, but I knew it was coming.

Overall it was enjoyable. I put it down several times and picked it back up within only a matter of days. It was by no means as good as the previous two books -- Interview with the Vampire and The Vampire Lestat... but it did give us more insight into the character of Lestat which was a driving force for me. I quite like the character of Lestat.

Do I recommend the book? If you like the series, if you liked the characters from the previous books... yes. It is an integral piece of the story and is an insight further into the minds of each of the vampires of Anne Rice's world. It is the story of how all vampires from this universe came to be and is therefore an important read if you loved this universe. But be aware that it has some serious downtime.