The Mummy or Ramses the Damned
Published: 6, May 1989
Author: Anne Rice
Genres: Adult, Contemporary, Family, Fantasy, Fiction, Ghost, Gothic, History, Horror, Literary, Literature, Occult, Paranormal, Psychological, Romance, Saga, Suspense, Thrillers, Urban, Vampire
Check the summary of this book here:
The Mummy or Ramses the Damned Summary
The Review:
The Mummy or Ramses the Damned by Anne Rice is about Ramses. In many respects, Ramses is unlike any of Anne Rice's other male characters. He's not as cunning and destructive as Lasher, as moody as Louis, or as high-maintenance as Lestat. Of course, the fact that he may have a couple of thousand years on them may be a factor. He is also a solar creature, unlike his ghosts and vampiric brethren. Ramses is a thoughtful, intellectual man with a strong sense of fairness.
He is overwhelmed by the future when he awakens from a self-imposed slumber that takes him back to Cleopatra's time. He wakes up to automobiles, trains, newspapers, scientific discoveries, telephones, moving images, and aircraft, to name a few. Is he stressed out? Rebuking? Frightened? No. He's awestruck, enthralled, and, above all, ecstatic. He wants to see and do everything instantly!
I know I appreciated every aspect of this book. It was amazing to read. Anne Rice's writing is filled with emotion and passion, and her descriptions transport the reader to the places she portrays, immersing you in her story and enticing you into a world you'll never want to leave.
Her works entice the reader to want to be a part of them. Julie's demeanor makes you feel the world is a great place, and Ramses is a character you fall in love with straight away. This book has the ability to make a reader's heart sing as well as hurt, and it instills in them a desire for justice in the world.
Like a Tanith Lee novel, this book is written in a nearly poetic tone. The characters, as archetypes of wickedness, lethargy, attractiveness, and so on, have a fairy tale aspect to them. While this may easily go awry, she manages to make it work and do so nicely.
I know that this narrative is not for everyone, yet she always asks well-informed questions about life and its significance. It is nevertheless a wonderful novel, despite the fact that it might be predictable at times.
This is without a doubt one of my favorite Anne Rice books. It's refreshingly distinct and adds a new spin to the traditional mummy tale. The wonderful atmosphere Anne Rice creates in Edwardian London and Egypt is maybe my favorite aspect of the story. The characters are well-developed and believable, and the reader is immediately drawn in. The variation on the traditional mummy story offers a new kind of terror than the standard waddling monster of Hollywood's golden era.
Anyone who has seen the movie version of The Mummy (1932) with Boris Karloff will be familiar with the plot of this novel. It takes place in the early 1900s when the British had a greater effect on Egypt than they do now, and massive excavations were taking place, with the discovery of several tombs and antiquities.
We have an older guy and his aide on-site, and they are opening a tomb with scant care for the curses etched on the door. Inside, they discover a spotless tomb complete with manuscripts, jars, and the obligatory sarcophagus.
The story involves his daughter Julia and some more people related to him and what happens to all of these characters once the story actually moves forward.
In simple words, some of it is similar, but the primary distinction is that this mummy is not malicious and does not wish to murder everyone it encounters. One more primary difference is that it is not a mummy, but rather an indestructible man.
Anne Rice was really creative in allowing him to absorb the culture and technology of the period, and in picking the beginning of the twentieth century when technology was still in its infancy and still explainable to the curious mind.
The characters were all well-written, which was to be expected given that this was an Anne Rice novel. Then there's the family's clever but unhappy acquaintance, a lonely but married gay who is getting on in years and knows Ramses' secrets.
The story is set in Egypt and England in the 1920s. Anne Rice's writing is descriptive, and it made me feel as if I had been transported to another century. I can still picture the English drawing room with its thick carpets and gorgeous curtains if I close my eyes. I can sense the sweltering desert breezes and an ancient Cairo populated by British officials wearing white clothes and gowns.
Of course, the success or failure of the work hinges on the reality of its key character, Ramses. Anne Rice once again exceeds all expectations as she portrays the eternal man's life, loves, successes, and failures. Ramses is a guy we can comprehend, unlike her vampire characters, who are creatures with reasons that are distant from the reader's perspective.
He is a full-fledged human being. We are hungry, but he is always hungry. We are in love, but he has been in love for ages. He bounds while we walk. We can get to know him, despite the fact that he is enormous in every sense.
Anne Rice is the queen of immortality. She's allowed us to view the lengthy, harsh, sad, beautiful, and dirty history of humanity through the eyes of a variety of unkillable entities over the years. She is most known for introducing the vampires into the twentieth century, but she has also written about werewolves, angels, demons, spirits, aliens, and even a genie. The fact that she also did her own rendition of a mummy narrative gets lost in the swirl in this eternal collection.
Which is a great shame, since The Mummy is a fantastic novel. Anne Rice doesn't quite reinvent the stereotype as she did with vampires and werewolves, but she does exactly what she does best: she takes the theme of an immortal creature and turns it around to create a deep thinking, feeling being, giving us history, romance, and excitement in the process — and in the process, she manages to inject vitality and sexuality into a dried withered hollow shell of a decomposing body.
Final Thoughts:
I've always regarded Anne Rice's books to be fascinating and enjoyable. She is a master at suspense and dragging you into a tale to make you forget about reality for a brief period of time. She had a way of making you feel linked to all of the book's characters, not just the main ones.
This book is ideal for anybody who likes all things, Mummy, from the Boris Karloff classic through contemporary films. Ramses the Damned is both immortal and human at the same time.
No one compares to Anne Rice when it comes to capturing the atmosphere; anywhere and everywhere she takes you, you'll be able to smell the flowers and feel the breeze as she portrays it.
Synopsis:
“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 life, he is now Ramses the Damned, doomed forever to wander the earth, desperate to quell hunger that can never be satisfied—for food, for wine, for women.
Reawakened in opulent Edwardian London, he becomes Dr. Ramsey, an 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. . . .”
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Rating: 95/100
Recommended: 100/100 Yes.
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