Review of Alice in Wonderland: The Vampire Slayer by J. J. Maddox and Lewis Carroll

As indicated by the title, Alice in Wonderland: The Vampire Slayer by J. J. Maddox and Lewis Carroll is a retelling of Alice in Wonderland set in a world in which vampires are real. Alice's profession is vampire slaying, and she ventures to Wonderland in order to destroy the Blood Queen hoping to put an end to the vampire war once and for all. This short story was an ok read, but I don't think I'd have any interest in reading it again, and I'm not entirely sure I'd recommend it. For those that are curious, it shouldn't take more than a couple of hours to read it though. For the most part, the story seemed to stick fairly close to events from the original tale with details changed here and there up until the end. When reading this story, I got the feeling like I was reading fanfiction, which I suppose it essentially is, but it also had more of an amateurish feel to it. There were also a few errors here and there in the text, which would be much easier to overlook if this was a free piece of fanfiction posted online rather than a published work. I really don't think that this short story is worth the price it is being sold for on Amazon.com, so if you really want to read it, I'd suggest waiting for when it goes on sale for free like I did. This short story is also labeled as being the first in the Vampire Wonderland series. I have no plans to read any additional stories in this series unless I can pick them up for free like I did with the first one.

Review of Prince Lestat by Anne Rice

Prince Lestat by Anne Rice is the newest book in Anne Rice's Vampire Chronicles series. In this story there is a mysterious disembodied voice that plagues Lestat and numerous vampires around the world. At first the voice is just harmless and taunting, but soon it gains the ability to manipulate the more weak minded vampires into doing its bidding. The book recounts the stories of the different vampires that have been affected by this voice and how they must all come together to put a stop to it. I did enjoy this book for the most part even if some of the turns of events it was quite obvious what was going to happen beforehand. It was quite verbose and drawn out, but not nearly as tedious as some of Anne Rice's other books.

This book provided a nice recap of the events from many of the previous books from the series which was a good refresher for people already familiar with those books eliminating the need to read them again before reading this book. It's probably not strictly necessary to read the previous books before reading this book if you've never read them before, but you will get the most out of this book if you have read them. I would recommend reading the majority of the series before starting this book. The only books that can probably be skipped are Merrick, Blackwood Farm, and Blood Canticle because those are crossover books with the Mayfair Witches trilogy and there is no mention of the Mayfair Witches in this book. You also probably don't need to read Vittorio the Vampire either because that book was a completely standalone novel and the protagonist of that book does not make an appearance in this one. I'd definitely recommend this book to anyone who is a fan of the Vampire Chronicles.

Review of Reaper Man by Terry Pratchett

In Reaper Man by Terry Pratchett the Death of Discworld finds himself out of a job when the powers that be fire him for developing a personality. Death is now mortal and must live out the rest of his numbered days among humans until the new Death arrives to take him away. With the Disc temporarily without a Death things can't die properly and a huge amount of excess life force accumulates causing some very strange things to happen. This is a very hilarious book. I enjoyed it immensely and highly recommend it.

Review of Blood Canticle by Anne Rice

Blood Canticle by Anne Rice is the last book in her Vampire Chronicles series. It picks up right where Blackwood Farm left off but this book is narrated by Lestat rather than Quinn Blackwood. I thought the first chapter of the book was absolutely hilarious and it was worth reading just for that. There were some parts of the books that kind of dragged on a bit and I didn't feel like they added much to the story, but things definitely picked up again three quarters of the way through the book. This book also continues the story from the end of the Mayfair Witches trilogy so it was nice to find out what happened with the Taltos after that.

Review of Blackwood Farm by Anne Rice

Blackwood Farm by Anne Rice is the 9th book in her Vampire Chronicles series. This book has characters from the Mayfair Witches trilogy so it might be helpful to read those books first(plus Merrick), but it isn't strictly necessary. In the style of many of her books most of the story is the main character recounting their history and past events leading up to whatever is going on in the present. I found some of the history to be a bit tedious to get through, such as going over family genealogy, but the book got better once I got past this part. I enjoyed the book overall and gave it 4 stars.

Review of Blood and Gold by Anne Rice

Blood and Gold by Anne Rice is part of her Vampire Chronicles series. The majority of the book is just recounting the events of the life of the vampire Marius. I found a lot of the book to be repetitive. Many of the events described were things that were told of in previous books in the series, though I suppose it was somewhat different being told from a different viewpoint. Still I found it somewhat tedious to be rereading the same stories again. There were new stories in the book from Marius' life that did keep me interested, but I felt like way too much time was spent on stuff that had been gone over in previous books. While the new material was interesting/entertaining to read about, I'm not really sure it added much to the series and it felt a bit superfluous to me. I ended up rating the book with three stars, and I'd probably only recommend it to those who are big fans of Anne Rice's vampire books and really like the characters of Marius, Armand, and Pandora.

Review of Merrick by Anne Rice

I really enjoyed Merrick. It's part of the Vampire Chronicles series and it focuses on the history between David Talbot and a witch named Merrick. The history is all background story of course in the fashion that Anne Rice often does in her books, but the main plot of the story is that Louis wants to contact Claudia's ghost and David gets in touch with the witch Merrick to request that she use her magic to do this. Personally I found the background story more interesting than the actual main plot. This book does involve the Mayfair witches so if you have any interest in reading the trilogy about the Mayfair witches, you should probably read them before you read this book.

Review of Pandora by Anne Rice

I quite enjoyed reading this book. One thing I should note though is that this book really should be read before The Vampire Armand for reasons of continuity.