i love how the reviews for this book seem to be comprised solely of 1. people who actually read the fucking trainwreck and 2. people who will look at any book by anne rice no matter how horrible it is and automatically rate it 4 or 5 stars. 
 this is just ...god it's so bad. like i can't even fully coherently type out how bad it was because 1. it took me over 2 weeks to read and 2. i feel like i've already blocked out parts that were too ridiculous because i just can't even handle how awful this book is. i even skimmed like a good third of it and it STILL took me 2 weeks to muddle my way through it. the entire tale of atlantis part was just me reading every like 3 paragraph and sighing out loud going WHAT while my roommate [who finished the book within like 4 days] laughed at me. 
 ok 
 first, don't try to write sci-fi if you aren't going to do ANY kind of scientific research to make things mildly believable. the entire alien side of this book is ridiculous and nothing is really explained or makes any sense at all. i almost wish it WAS a book about mermaids like we all though bc then at least it still would have been fantasy and it would have been bad but it would have made sense in a way. and she wasn't even trying towards the end. 'oh i have to write a brain surgery scene? well lestat is having brain surgery and he's unconscious for it and so i'll just make the chapter his pov so i don't have to actually deal with it literally at all' REALLY ANNE? like she just rambled for half the book, threw in the backstory of atlantis and then thought 'oh fuck i actually have to finish this somehow' 
 second, the only vampire who is even really in this is lestat and while lestat is my favorite it's the relationships between the vampires that used to make this series so compelling but now i feel like they're just a group of really ooc people like ...standing in rooms together not really connecting or doing anything at all. like what the hell was armand's problem for the entire book? i'm not really surprised he reacted that way but give us some kind of conversation that tells us his motives or something. and all of the random new characters from the last book still don't feel like actual people either. *sigh* 
 just please let this be the last one. it was so bad and they've only ever been steadily getting worse since ...well since memnoch really. i don't even want to think what the next one will be.