Anne Rice – ~*LunaSea*~

Rice, Anne. Vampire Lestat. Ballantine Books, 1985.

Reason read: to finish the series started in November in honor of Interview with the Vampire‘s movie release.

In her second book of the Chronicle of the Vampire series, Rice takes us back to the beginning of Vampire Lestat’s life. Readers first meet him towards the end of her bestseller, Interview with the Vampire. This time Vampire Lestat guides the audience deeper into what it means to be a vampire. He shares what happens to him physically (hair and nails don’t grow any longer than at the point of immortality but if either hair or nails are cut, they will grow back to that prescribed length), as well as what happens to a vampire mentally. To be immortal takes a toll. To no longer walk among humans is a sacrifice. To constantly be on the hunt for fresh blood is a chore. Lestat makes interesting choices. He invites his mother to become a vampire, but holds best friend Nicholas at bay.
Rice is really clever to include Interview with the Vampire in Vampire Lestat as a pack of lies.
Confessional: Lestat is a whiny brat in the beginning of the novel. I was sick of his crying until he became a vampire. I was also growing weary of the Dark Gift, the Devil’s Road, the Children of Darkness, and the amplified amounts of whispering and weeping. It was like reading a horror soap opera full of dramatic sighs and posturing.

Best line, “The world around me had become my lover and my teacher” (p 329).

Author fact: There are a total of eight books in the Chronicles of the Vampires series, I am not reading any except the first two.

Book trivia: Vampire Lestat was never made into a movie.

Playlist: Bach’s Art of the Fugue, and Mozart.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter called “Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror” (p 213).

Rice, Anne. Interview with the Vampire. Buccaneer Books, 2006.

Reason read: The movie version of Interview with the Vampire was released in November. Read in honor of the event I did not attend.

This was supposed to be an interview with a very young reporter who wants to write the biography of a vampire. Louis de Pointe du Lac the Vampire agrees to sit down with the unnamed interviewer and share his life story. I was expecting more of a dialogue; a back and forth of questions and answers. Instead, in more of a monologue, Louis shares the romantic history of his vampire beginnings in New Orleans in 1791. Despondent after the death of his family, Louis meets Lestat who convinces him to chose immortality over suicide. With Vampire Lestat as his cruel creator and mentor, Louis learns to avoid the sun, sleep in coffins and experience the exquisite pleasure of the hunt; learning how to drink blood to stay alive (their immortality is conditional on that detail). Yet Louis can not let go of his humanness, drinking the blood of animals and avoiding humans altogether. He is too kind for his kind. Young, beautiful and extremely clever Claudia is his first human feasting. As a child vampire, she is full of grace, passion and intelligence. Louis becomes infatuated with her. It is she who convinces Louis that together, they must kill Lestat and run away to Europe (Transylvania) to find more vampires like themselves. The “couple” end up in France where they find a troupe of vampires and even more danger than they bargained for. The France section of Interview with the Vampire drags quite a bit. Some vampires finally die and I’ll leave it at that, as I will be reading Lestat’s biography next.
Confessional: I did not expect Interview with the Vampire to be so sensual. The act of drinking blood was portrayed as borderline erotic. Yet, “Louie” is a goofy name for a vampire who has lived over 200 years.

Author fact: Rice was an atheist for thirty-eight years. Interview with the Vampire was a search for God and her first novel. Brava!

Book trivia: as mentioned before, Interview with the Vampire was made into a movie starring Tom Cruise. Brad Pitt and Kirsten Dunst in 1994.

Music: Mozart

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter called “Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror” (p 213).