The vampire Lestat de Lioncourt, hero, leader, inspirer, irresistible force, irrepressible spirit, battles a strange otherworldly form that has somehow taken possession of Lestat's undead body and soul. It is through this spirit, previously considered benign for thousands of vampire years and throughout the Vampire Chronicles, that we learn the 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 of centuries ago that thrived in the Atlantic Ocean. And as we learn of the mighty, far-reaching powers and perfections of this lost kingdom of Atalantaya, 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.