I’m sure everyone’s heard by now, but if this announcement isn’t tailor-made for Paranormal Unbound like your very own fake fangs, I don’t know what is. Last Sunday a week ago, Anne Rice announced that she will be publishing the next installment of the Vampire Chronicles with Prince Lestat, due out October 28!

I’m sorry, I feel like I have to repeat that again! Anne Rice is bringing back Lestat!

Anyone else here a huge fan? I vividly remember the days when new Anne Rice novels came out and I had, just had, to shell out the big bucks on release day to get the hardcover and then I knew that for the next 2-3 days I would be unreachable. I’d clear my calendar of anything but minimal sleep and food until I’d devoured it. Her rich story-telling style and appreciation of history always had me in awe. I missed her books during her religious faze, and I confess I haven’t read her return into the foray of paranormal with her werewolf books, but I’ll definitely have this pre-ordered. Wow, weird, Amazon is now around for this, which wasn’t an option before, LOL.

Here’s the description on Amazon:

A stunning departure, a surprising and compelling return . . . From Anne Rice, perennial best seller, single-handed reinventor of the vampire cosmology—a new, exhilarating novel, a deepening of her vampire mythology, and a chillingly hypnotic mystery-thriller.

“What can we do but reach for the embrace that must now
contain both heaven and hell: our doom again and again and
again . . .” —from The Vampire Lestat

Rice once again summons up the irresistible spirit-world of the oldest and most powerful forces of the night, invisible beings unleashed on an unsuspecting world able to take blood from humans, in a long-awaited return to the extraordinary world of the Vampire Chronicles and the uniquely seductive Queen of the Damned (“mesmerizing” —SF Chronicle), a long-awaited novel that picks up where The Vampire Lestat (“brilliant…its undead characters are utterly alive” —New York Times) left off more than a quarter of a century ago to create an extraordinary new world of spirits and forces—the characters, legend, and lore of all the Vampire Chronicles.

The novel opens with the vampire world in crisis…vampires have been proliferating out of control; burnings have commenced all over the world, huge massacres similar to those carried out by Akasha in The Queen of the Damned . . . Old vampires, roused from slumber in the earth are doing the bidding of a Voice commanding that they indiscriminately burn vampire-mavericks in cities from Paris and Mumbai to Hong Kong, Kyoto, and San Francisco.

As the novel moves from present-day New York and the West Coast to ancient Egypt, fourth century Carthage, 14th-century Rome, the Venice of the Renaissance, the worlds and beings of all the Vampire Chronicles—Louis de Pointe du Lac; the eternally young Armand, whose face is that of a Boticelli angel; Mekare and Maharet, Pandora and Flavius; David Talbot, vampire and ultimate fixer from the secret Talamasca; and Marius, the true Child of the Millennia; along with all the other new seductive, supernatural creatures—come together in this large, luxuriant, fiercely ambitious novel to ultimately rise up and seek out who—or what—the Voice is, and to discover the secret of what it desires and why . . .

And, at the book’s center, the seemingly absent, curiously missing hero-wanderer, the dazzling, dangerous rebel-outlaw–the great hope of the Undead, the dazzling Prince Lestat . . .

 And then when I thought I’d squeed myself out last week, Rice announced who she’d prefer playing Lestat if another feature film were created: Chris Helmsworth or Stephen Amell! (To be fair, she also said Anson Mount, but I’ve never heard of him, so that didn’t get my blood pumping). Since I’m a huge fan of Arrow, my pick is Amell, but I’ve enjoyed Helmsworth as Thor too. But Amell just seems to have that brooding thing down (hard for blonds, IMO) and he’s got the looks for it. He’s smiling here, but trust me, the man oozes broodiness (is that a word?).

Anyway, I’m excited that this series will be getting a new life and am hoping new fans will discover the series as well. I wonder if having her back in the paranormal genre game will also re-energize the genre too? We readers know it’s not dead, but maybe publishers will pay attention to it again, too? Who knows.

What about you? Are you excited about this news? Were you a Rice fan back in the day?