Roger asks him to take care of his daughter Dora, a devout and popular televangelist, whom he wants to spare from embarrassment.

Even though Lestat suspects the entire experience was some kind of deception, he tells his story to Armand, David Talbot and Dora, who have joined him in New York City.

Although the novel fits into the storyline of The Vampire Chronicles, the vast majority of it consists of Memnoch's account of cosmology and theology.

The novel follows up on claims made by David in The Tale of the Body Thief that God and the Devil are on better terms than most Christians believe.

The universe as revealed to Lestat by the Devil follows the following cosmology: God is a powerful and immortal being worshipped by angels, His first creation, since before the existence of matter and time.

Through evolution, creatures on the Earth developed into the image of God and angels and a "flame" of life which allowed pain and death.

These souls collect in confusion around the world in an airy realm that the angels describe as "Sheol" or "the Gloom", attempting to come to terms with their existence.

After thousands of years wandering Sheol, Memnoch discovers an especially powerful group of souls who have forgiven God for His indifference and absence and appreciate the grandness of all creation.

Unlike a regular human, when God died on the cross He knew that He would survive and thus could never have known the true suffering of Man: the fear of death.

For God, this complaint is the last straw: He declares Memnoch to be His adversary, and commands him to rule Sheol and Earth in a devilish form, preparing souls for Heaven in his own fashion.

Memnoch doesn't like this work and is constantly asking God to appoint someone else to the job (as David Talbot witnesses in The Tale of the Body Thief).

[2] Booth comments that "If this is the last of the Vampire Chronicles, it's a dismal conclusion to an inspiring series of books that won Anne Rice many admirers.

"[2] Michael McLeod writing for Orlando Sentinel described the book as a cross between a creature feature and The 700 Club and said that Rice's "[...] proportions are so epic that her dark hero gets lost among them.