At the novel's center: the vampire Lestat de Lioncourt, battling a strange otherworldly form that has somehow taken possession of his undead body and soul. It is through this spirit, considered benign for thousands of vampire years and throughout the Vampire Chronicles, that we come to be told the hypnotic tale of a great sea power of ancient times: a mysterious heaven on earth situated on a boundless continent--and of how and why this force came to build and rule the great legendary empire that thrived in the Atlantic Ocean. We are taken on an electrifying journey through this golden civilization, and as we learn of the powers and perfections of the lost realms of Atlantis, we come to understand its secrets, and how and why the vampire Lestat, indeed all the vampires, must reckon so many millennia later with the terrifying force of this ageless, all-powerful Atalantaya spirit.