Why Rice's vampires will return

What happened

Novelist Anne Rice told Time magazine that she would write one more Vampire Chronicles book despite her 2005 vow to put the characters to rest and focus on Christian fiction. “"When I published my first book about the Lord I said I would never write about those characters again," Rice said. "But I have one more book that I would really like to write. It will be a story that I need to tell."

What the commentators said

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

“Turns out, vampires aren't that easy to kill,” said Carolyn Sayre in Time. When Rice abandoned her gothic novel series after “returning to the church,” she told Christianity Today that she would “never go back, not even if they say you will be financially ruined. I would be a fool for all eternity to turn my back on God like that." She explains her decision by saying she won’t be writing about vampires in the same way, but “it is difficult to see it as anything but a change of heart.”

Even if Rice’s decision to go “back on her word” makes sense to her, said the entertainment and gossip blog PerezHilton.com, fans will probably end up wishing she had left the vampire Lestat in his grave. “The Queen of the Damned author justifies her decision by saying the book will have a definite Christian framework and a focus on the theme of redemption.” In other words, it will be a disappointment for Rice’s old fans.

Don’t be so sure, said the blog AvidBookReader.com. Rice told Time she wanted to give Lestat “one more book” because she had a story she “needed to tell.” She’s been writing about the life of Jesus since she found God and abandoned the undead, and she wants to put her old characters in a “biblical framework” and let Lestat wrestle with the existence of God. “It’ll be interesting to see how this last book will unfold.”