Interview with the Vampire & The Vampire Lestat

Interview with the Vampire
Anne Rice

The time's now.
We are in a small room with the vampire, face to face, as he speaks, as he pours out the hypnotic, shocking, moving, and erotically charged confessions of his first two hundred years as one of the living dead ...
A provoking book, which starts a rich series...

The Vampire Lestat
Anne Rice

After the spectacular debut of Interview with the Vampire in 1976, Anne Rice put aside her vampires to explore other literary interests--Italian castrati in Cry to Heaven and the Free People of Color in The Feast of All Saints . But Lestat, the mischievous creator of Louis in Interview , finally emerged to tell his own story in the 1985 sequel, The Vampire Lestat . As with the first book in the series, the novel begins with a frame narrative. After over a half century underground, Lestat awakens in the 1980s to the cacophony of electronic sounds and images that characterizes the MTV generation. Particularly, he is captivated by a fledgling rock band named Satan's Night Out. Determined both to achieve international fame and end the centuries of self-imposed vampire silence, Lestat takes command of the band (now renamed "The Vampire Lestat") and pens his own autobiography. The remainder of the novel purports to be that autobiography: the vampire traces his mortal youth as the son of a marquis in pre-Revolutionary France, his initiation into vampirism at the hands of Magnus, and his quest for the ultimate origins of his undead species. While very different from the first novel in the Vampire Chronicles, The Vampire Lestat has proved to be the foundation for a broader range of narratives than is possible from Louis's brooding, passive perspective. The character of Lestat is one of Rice's most complex and popular literary alter egos, and his Faustian strivings have a mythopoeic resonance that links the novel to a grand tradition of spiritual and supernatural fiction. --Patrick O'Kelley

 Huh, it seems that I forgot to write about Interview with a Vampire. I guess I'll try to write about both of these books at the same time, but mainly about The Vampire Lestat.

It took me FOREVER to finish these books. I wanted to read these as research to how another author took hold of the vampire genre. I had a hard time reading these. I could tell by the sentence structure that Rice was trying really hard to sound elegant ALL of the time. It's gets tiresome to read the same structure over and over again, especially when it's so thick.

I also didn't care too much for either character. Louis and Lestat are almost like reading the same character. Louis is more melodramatic and Lestat is impulsive, but the way they thought was the same. After I read Interview with the Vampire I didn't think about continuing on. But my father told me to read the next book in the series, which is The Vampire Lestat. He said that Lestat is a more interesting subject to read about. I was bored with both of them. I'm not continuing with the series.

I can see how some people like the books. Some interesting things happen. Lestat sees some cool things. But I didn't care after a while. It become too episodic. The story didn't feel like it was one long story, but a bunch of parts of a story with no guide to the end.

I wish that I had to more to say about these books. I wish I could tell you everything that is swimming through my head right now, but I'm not sure how to put it. I guess this series just isn't my cup of tea.I wouldn't personally recommend these books, but I do understand that some would like them.