Every October I tend to read books that are mostly “Halloween-ish” in nature. It doesn’t actually have to directly link to Halloween (although Bradbury’s Something Wicked and The Halloween Tree are on my list annually). Anything supernatural, creepy and/or monster-ish gets tackled during these weeks leading up to the 31st. Considering the amount of related challenges that pop-up this time of year makes it pretty clear I’m not the only seasonal-reader!
So, after I finished up The Night Eternal…I jumped right into The Mummy.
Way back when I was in high school, I went through a huge Stephen King-kick, then moved onto Dean Koontz and then I discovered Interview with the Vampire and that started my Anne Rice obsession. This was quite a while ago, we’re talking almost 23 years. So, I guess it’s to be expected that memory lapses would begin to occur and I could not for the life of me remember if I had already read this book. What also made it difficult, in addition to the large time-gap, was that the mummy theme has been done quite frequently. Not nearly as much as vampires, but it’s getting there.
As it turns out, this was my first time reading it. I would have remembered a story like this one! It had the same vibe to it as The Mummy film. The plot lines were very different, but they had the same early-1920’s feel to them.
Rice’s Mummy ended up being more of a love story…and Ramses, although immortal, managed to blunder his way around when it came to the women in his…eternity. However, I enjoyed the characters, the setting and the story itself. It moved at the perfect pace and I found it to be a very fun book to read, especially at this time of year.
The ending was left with more than one opening for a sequel, but I’m relatively sure one was never written. Frustrating in one sense, but in a literary world filled with sequels, trilogies, chronicles, etc. it’s always nice to close a back cover and be done. Letting your own mind fill in the gaps and give you whichever ending you’d like best!!
Off to figure out which book to read next!!
the daily oz 