The Wolves of Midwinter by Anne Rice -- A Review

About midways through Anne Rice's newest novel, the protagonist Rueben Golding, while contemplating a Christmas display, prays to the Christ child, "Please show me how to be good. Please, no matter what I am, show me how to be good."

That simple prayer might be the main theme of the entire novel, if not most of the author's works. The aching desire to be good in the face of adversity and Otherness.

Her most famous literary creation, the vampire Lestat, also shared this longing to be good-- as, I believe,  the author does herself. Substitute "alcoholism", "homosexuality", "doubt" or "lasciviousness" for "vampire" or "werewolf" and I think you come to the heart of her fiction's thematic core. Anne Rice's fiction is about coming to grips with one's own Otherness, that part of every person's soul that is not acceptable to normal, judgmental, oppressive society. Whatever failing you might believe you have, or society declares that you have, Rice's fiction is about finding acceptance and joy in one's own goodness. It is about redemption. As a Catholic and a deeply spiritual woman, I think Mrs. Rice is intimately familiar with that conflict.

But while The Vampire Chronicles explored this theme subtly, in the Wolf Gift series, that subtext is illuminated in a much more overt manner. I'm not sure it's really subtext at all! The werewolves she has created for this series, for example, can smell evil, and have an instinctive revulsion to harming the innocent. It's just a little too blatant for my tastes. I prefer her more ambiguous vampire creations. It seems, at times, almost like a superhero comic book, although to give credit where credit is due, the Wolves of Midwinter is much more realistic than The Wolf Gift in that she introduces some moral ambiguity into the proceedings. For me, it really saved this series, and I hope she explores that further as she continues with it.

As for the plot itself, I found it to be an interesting, intimate tale about a group of friends (who just happen to be werewolves) coming together to celebrate the Yuletide. Mrs. Rice explores the pagan roots of the Christmas holiday, and even introduces several new species of immortals-- all very interesting. There were times I felt she spent too much time describing the various settings, but it did not ruin the story for me. She has a real love of architecture and history and material things, and I think her sensuality gets away from her sometimes.

All in all, I do recommend this book to readers of supernatural fiction. I am sure there will be a few people scandalized by her frank discussion of religion and sexuality and the violent content of the novel, but it held my interest from beginning to end, and reaffirmed my faith in my own goodness, despite my own particular idiosyncracies.

Anne Rice declared in an interview once, "We're all vampires!" And that's the aching beauty of it.

There's nothing quite so fascinating, or deserving of sympathy, as a monster who wants to be good.

New Kindle Paperwhite, A Review

If you don't look below the surface, you might be disappointed with Amazon's latest ereader offering, or maybe I should say unmoved. The new Kindle Paperwhite looks exactly like last year's model. Even the packaging is all but the same. They say it's .2 grams lighter, or something like that, but to be honest, I don't have the tactile sensitivity to feel such a minute difference in weight. Of course, it's probably wise not to change a product that is already basically perfect. I mean, what else do you need? It's got an adjustable built in light-- which is, by the way, improved over last year's built in light, i.e. more evenly distributed across the screen. It's got a higher resolution e-ink screen with "whiter whites and darker darks", though I really find it hard to see too much of an improvement there either. The page turns are slightly faster, with fewer refreshes, and the touch screen sensitivity is adequate to the task. Most of the improvements, incremental as they are, are under the hood, and it is these improvements that made me want the new Kindle Paperwhite. I really like the x-ray feature, which is useful when you need to look up a character-- like, say, in the Game of Thrones books, which have hundreds of different characters with odd names. There is a neat vocabulary type app built in that takes the words you've looked up and puts them into flashcards so you can memorize them. And it has picture-in-picture, where you can flip back through the ebook in a secondary window without losing your place. Still, that is about all that's new from what I've seen so far, so I have to say there is really not much reason to upgrade this year if you already own last year's Paperwhite. I was hoping this year would be the year Amazon releases a 7 inch e-ink Kindle, or maybe a DX with a color screen, like the Jetbook Color, but it doesn't look like that's going to happen. My verdict: spend your money on some new books-- you could buy one of mine!-- and wait for something a little more innovative to come out. This year it's just baby steps for Amazon and the new Kindle Paperwhite.