Having just finished this book, I had to put down in words my dismay at all the reviews that blasted it.I understand why some people don't like it. This is not the Lestat they thought they knew. The style of the story is different. And there are none of the friends we have come to know and love, like Louis, Armand and Marius.But if you stop and think back over the whole Vampire Chronicle series, you will see that this book (hopefully not the last as Anne Rice has said) was inevitable.Lestat wants to be a saint; He tells us this almost from the very beginning. He talks about it as if there was nothing left for him to be but a saint. This is not the Lestat we have seen in some of the other Chronicle books. That Lestat was seen as evil, and as "Cain, the slayer of my brother". But you have to remember that Lestat's words have only been used in four of the previous nine books. Louis told us the story in Interview with the Vampire, Armand told his own story, David told us of Merrick, Marius gave us the rest of his tale in Blood and Gold, and Quinn Blackwood told us the story of Blackwood Farm. When these others talked of Lestat, they were not using his words, his style. Blood Canticle is the first book to use Lestat's own words since Memnoch the Devil.And why wouldn't he have changed his manner of speaking in that time? Lestat is the one who, learning from the example of Marius, always found a way to fit in with the times he was living. So one of the lines is the book ends with !!!!!!! Isn't that the way people do things today in the world of Internet chat and email? Why should we be surprised that Lestat is doing it?As for his wanting to be a saint, think back in the Chronicles to a time someone said, "As we get older, we do not really change. We just become more and more ourselves". Re-read The Vampire Lestat. Since he was a child, Lestat dreamed of being a saint. As he gets older, and becomes more and more himself, his earliest dreams and desires would surely come back stronger than ever.I won't talk of the story, because the story tells itself. It is a typical book in the Vampire Chronicles in that for the first little while, you may be confused, thinking nothing is happening in sequence, or meshes with anything else in the story. But then it all starts coming together, as it always does, and you have trouble putting it down.This is not the best of the Chronicles (See Memnoch the Devil). Nor is it the worst. It may not be the best way to end the series (if it is truly finished), but it a very good story, a very good read, and is very true to the Lestat we saw in The Vampire Lestat, Queen of the Damned, The Tale of the Body Thief and Memnoch the Devil. This character has grown into the times. And that's what is making people say this is a bad book; He's not the same. Good for him!This is not a bad book. It's good book. I enjoyed it thoroughly.