Sometimes you just have to let good things come to an end. That way it lasts in your memory as something beloved and not something that was beat into the ground so severely you had no choice but to bury it.

That’s how I feel about the “The Vampire Chronicles” and Anne Rice’s newest book “Prince Lestat.” My excitement for the return of Rice’s iconic vampires doesn’t overshadow the fact that this book could’ve been better. It could’ve been so much more.

New characters are wonderful, but it’s the old characters returning fans came for. Yet many of the fan favorites were reduced to a more cameo-like status while Rice threw us into the point of views of new characters.

I found myself rushing through these new narratives because of eagerness to get to parts with old characters only to find there wasn’t much to some of them. Then Rice, who isn’t exactly known for creating strong female characters, kills off two of her strongest female characters.

For a book that’s meant to be more of an aftermath to her third book in the series, “Queen of the Damned,” it was very surprising that she decided to kill these two particular ancient vampires.

Rice also has a talent for writing a lot without saying much. Her descriptions are beautifully written yet sometimes it’s a bit overkill. You would think Rice was actually in Renaissance Italy herself.

Let your readers’ imaginations do some exercising because it’s not necessary to describe every detail down to how someone turns his or her head.

But all of that aside, Rice has brilliant ideas and is able to craft things that don’t seem like good ideas into something. A vampire that’s also a rock star? It sounds really weird, but it worked.

In “Prince Lestat,” readers were introduced to vampire scientists, which is an interesting side of things that hasn’t really been explored before in Rice’s dreamy, poetic vampire world.

An eternally 12-year-old vampire with a radio show? Cool. It’s stuff like this you don’t normally associate with vampires and it’s great that Rice is exploring these things and new characters after 11 years since the last book.

If only she would’ve explored a better plot. The vampire world is in crisis because of a mysterious voice urging them to kill each other and burnings similar to those of previous antagonist Akasha have begun.

The plot was too similar to “Queen of the Damned.”

I still loved reading this though, because it’s great knowing that this book is currently happening and wasn’t written decades before.

Hopefully this wonderful series gets some positive attention and Rice’s twelfth installment “Blood Paradise” makes for a better comeback.