NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Ramses the Great returns in this “darkly magical” (USA Today) novel from bestselling author Anne Rice
“The reader is held captive and, ultimately, seduced.”—San Francisco Chronicle
Ramses the Great lives!
But having drunk the elixer of live, he is now Ramses the Damned, doomed forever to wander the earth, desperate to quell hungers that can never be satisfied—for food, for wine, for women.
Reawakened in opulent Edwardian London, he becomes Dr. Ramsey, expert in Egyptology. He also becomes the close companion of voluptuous, adventurous Julie Stratford, heiress to a vast shipping fortune and the center of a group of jaded aristocrats with appetites of their own to appease.
But the pleasures Ramses enjoys with Julie cannot soothe him. Searing memories of his last reawakening, at the behest of Cleopatra, his beloved Queen of Egypt, burn in his immortal soul. And though he is immortal, he is still all too human. His intense longings for his great love, undiminished over the centuries, will force him to commit an act that will place everyone around him in the gravest danger. . . .
A rich old archaeologist digs up the mummy of Ramses the Third, a former great king of Egypt and rumored immortal. Despite all the written warnings in the tomb, the archeologist takes the mummy to his home in England, where slowly but surely Ramses awakens from his 2000 year slumber. The inevitable happens as he falls in love with the archaeologists daughter, and eventually screws up.
The plot of this book is very stale, even a little disappointing. Part 1 is still sort of OK, but when the major events in Part 2 start happening, you just want to continually slap your forehead in disapproval. How can he be so stupid? Stupid stupid stupid!
The concept of immortality in this book is interesting - rather than being strong in the darkness as her vampires are, these immortals gain power from the sun and they ARE indestructible - not even fire or grinding their bodies can kill them. So they ARE doomed to walk the earth until this world ends, very much in a Captain Jack Harkness way.
I admit that Anne Rice's way of storytelling and her way of describing those handsome, radiant characters is quite enchanting, but with this book she could have done a better job on the general storyline. Especially the ending is a huge disappointment. It's an open ending, not 'ending' anything, and it promises more, but as far as I know there's nothing more. Anne Rice didn't write a continuation of this story since 1989 and I suppose she never will.
