I've been putting off reading Anne Rice for a long while after reading the first book of her "Vampire Chronicles". But recently now I've read a book from one of her trilogies, "The Mummy or Ramses the Damned".
Ramses the Great becomes damned after drinking the elixir of life, making him immortal. He has been doomed to wander the Earth forever, with a hunger that he can never satisfy.
Now h wakes again in London in the Edwardian period, adopting the name of Mr. Ramsey, and becomes an expert in Egyptology. And becomes the companion to the adventurous Julie Stratford, an heiress to a massive shipping fortune and the main center of a group of aristocrats who have their own appetites that they also must appease.
But even with these new pleasures Ramses is not soothed. The memories of his beloved queen Cleopatra, who had reawakened him the last time, still burns in his own soul. Even being immortal he is still human. And his longings for her will force him to do something that would place him and everyone else in danger.
Thought I would enjoy something else from Rice that wasn't the "Vampire Chronicles", and I certainly found it with this one. Even when she's doing something different, this is still peak Rice. "The Mummy" tends to lean towards gothic romance, and a very saucy one at that! But the gothic horror element still shines through. Feels like reading a great gothic novel, but with a modern twist to it. There's still at least two more in this trilogy, both of them being co-written with her son Christopher (the third and final one would be finished by after Rice's death). I'm probably going to expecting the same to some extent, but I'm taking a real liking to this trilogy once I get those other two!
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