Rating: 
Summary: Not worth the bandages it's wrapped in
Review: This was completely ridiculous drivel. I usually like sexy thrillers, but this wasn't particularly sexy, nor very thrilling. Flat writing, repetition and bad research prevented me from being able to suspend my disbelief.
Rating: 
Summary: Not your atypical Mummy story
Review: I rarely read any books of Anne Rice's that isn't part of the Vampire Chronicles sereis. I've tried but they never captivated me like her popular vampire books have. The one book by Anne Rice that I do like that has nothing to do with vampires is "The Mummy or Ramses the Dead". This time Anne explores another legendary monster...the mummy but in her book, she makes the mummy, or Ramses as he is called, the hero not the monster we have seen in old horror movies. In a similiar vein to her vampire characters, Anne has Ramses the second immortal. He had drunk the elixir of life making him wander the planet for all eternity. Ramses who had been asleep for thousands of years is excavated in the early 1900s by Lawrence Stratford. Ramses witnesses Lawrence's unexpected passing. Later he finally awakens to save Lawrence's daughter from being murdered by her greedy cousin. In the vein of the vampire chronicles, Anne mixes horror and romance which I actually enjoyed. Critics may have panned this book but I loved it. I especially enjoyed it when Ramses makes the mistake of reawakening an old love only to realize what a mistake that was and the one person he does love is Julie Stratford. Even though the storyline is pretty cheesy and is just a Harlequin novel with a horror twist, "The Mummy" is a good book. It's a different take on the myth of the mummy.
Rating: 
Summary: "Something of a romance, fun supernatural adventure"
Review: Ah, Anne Rice. Ramses has come to Edwardian London and the city will never be the same after this undead guy searches for his lost love, Cleopatra. Joyfully campy, whether Rice intended it or not, The Mummy or Ramses the Dammed, makes for a just plain fun supernatural adventure that will appeal to men and women alike. It is something of a romance, too, and allows you to raise the question of what makes "good literature." The Mummy may not make for "literature," but what, then, does?
Rating:
Summary: The mummy walks!
Review: Sexy immortals with angst to spare are the cornerstones of Anne Rice's fiction. "The Mummy or Ramses the Damned" takes a different direction, mixing romance with horror and supernatural thrills. It has its flaws, but the raw energy of the book keeps it roaring up to the finale.Lawrence Stratford uncovers the mummy of Ramses the Second, or "Ramses the Damned." But before he can unravel the mysteries around the mummy, he's murdered by his amoral nephew Henry, and the mummy is shipped to England. Lawrence's daughter Julie takes possession both of the family fortune and the mummy -- only to have the mummy revive when exposed to sunlight, and try to kill the murderous Henry. He's Ramses, an Egyptian king who drank an elixir of eternal life taken from a Hittite priestess. Long ago, he faked his own death and wandered the world, eventually returning to Egypt and becoming the mentor/lover of the legendary Cleopatra -- only to lose her first to Antony, then to death. At first, Ramses is thrilled by the early-twentieth-century England, and he and Julie start to fall in love. But on a trip to Egypt, he comes across the mummy of Cleopatra, and revives her with a vial of the elixir. Except that this Cleopatra is mad, murderous, torn by her old loves and hates -- and unkillable. This is not your parents' "Mummy" story. Except for one mildly funny scene where Rameses first revives, there are no stumbling mummies covered in bandages. Instead we have a tortured immortal who wakes up into a new world, while still being rooted in the Egypt of three thousand years ago. Rice's lush prose is well-suited to the splendor of early twentieth-century England, when Egyptology was the fad -- she has lots of fun with the lace, pearl buttons, and opera houses. Her most awkward points are when Rameses is marveling at/criticizing 1914 England. At the same time, she gives new twists to the tale of the mummy, such as having him romance Cleopatra. Ramses gives a slightly new twist to the tormented, lonely immortal, by having his almost childlike response to things like faucets and shoes. Julie falls for him a bit too quickly (yes, he's gorgeous, but what else?), but a good love interest. The other characters -- the youth-craving Elliott, his clueless but sweet son Alex, and the money-hungry, evil Henry -- are all intriguing and fully explored. But Cleopatra is what makes the book -- she's seductive but mad, tormented but still loving. Dislike her, but Rice will make you pity her too. "The Mummy or Ramses the Damned" gives new twists to the story of a mummy come to life. Rather than an undercooked horror novel, Rice gives a thrilling, chilling look at immortality, and how what you want is not what you get.
Rating:
Summary: Captivating !!!
Review: This book was just the typical Anne Rice novel, only with a mummy instead of a vampire, and an even more unbelievable plot than usual (for her). 1) The grammar is atrocious. (How a supposedly professional writer can even get away with grammar this bad is more of a mystery than her plot is.) 2) The plot is about as predictable as can possibly be. 3) As usual, the book is 40% character development, 50% plot building, 3% bad eroticism (with her usual obsession with gay men), and 7% anit-climax. In other words she builds up a good book but then ends it way too quickly and leaves MUCH to be desired in a way that almost ruins the entire read. 4) The sex scenes (if you could even call them such in this case) were so short and un-erotic that it makes me wonder how ANYONE could believe that she even comprehends how to write erotica. For example, Julie's virginal deflowering, THE major love story of the book, for which the anticipation has been building up through a large portion of the book, is over in the bat of an eye with nary a description. If Julie barely got a good sex scene you can only imagine how pathetic the rest of them were. 5) Several plot-device inconsistancies make the actual workings of (as well as the supposed danger of) 'the elixer' quite confusing. One minute products of 'the elixer' can be crumped and damaged in the absense of sunlight. The next minute we're meant to believe that if people consume immortal livestock and crops (and how could you possibly comsume it if you haven't first cut it into tiny bits and cooked it?) it kills them before they can digest it because somehow in their stomachs and intenstines it regernates WITHOUT sunlight being available, and again after having already allowed itself to be cut into tiny bits and cooked. In other words this is a quite typical Anne Rice novel. If you can somehow get past all of this (as Anne Rice fans somehow find a way to do) then you will most likely thoroughly enjoy the read and hail it as one of her best books yet. Otherwise it at least makes for a good old fashioned waste of time that is marginally better than watching paint dry or grass grow.
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