The Vampire Lestat
rated: 4 out of 5
'I am dead, I am a vampire. And things will die so that I may live; I will drink their blood so that I may live. And I will never, never see Nicolas again, nor my mother, nor any of the humans I have known and loved, nor any of my human family. I'll drink blood, and I'll live forever. That is exactly what will be. And what will be is only beginning; it is just born! And the labor that brought it forth was rapture such as I have never known.'
After reading Interview With the Vampire, I wanted to read the rest of Anne Rice's vampire novels.
This book started off slowly for me, but as I kept on reading it took off. I like how you never really know what is going to happen next in this story.
It starts off with Lestat being 'underground' for a many years, then awakening and finding himself in the 1980's. He is stronger than ever and starved for human blood. He finds out that Louis, wrote a book called 'Interview With the Vampire'.
After reading a copy of it, he tears it apart and decides to write his own book. He wants to write the story of his life.
This is where the book really takes off, when Lestat begins to tell his tale.
We get to see a different side of Lestat than the one Louis describes in 'Interview With the Vampire'. We also learn where Lestat comes from and you understand him a bit better. He describes how be became a vampire and what happened to the vampire who made him. We see what happened to Lestat's mother Gabrielle, which is very juicy by the way. (and all of this is of course fascinating to those who read 'Interview')
This book had some very creepy passages and I enjoyed it thoroughly.
A few of the characters from 'Interview' make an appearance in this book as well, as well as new vampires. We also see how the 'Theater of the Vampires' came to be.
'I had to find Louis. I had to talk to him. In fact after reading his account of things, I ached for him, ached for his romantic illusions, and even his dishonesty.
I ached even for his gentlemanly malice and his physical presence, the deceptively soft sound of his voice.
Of course I hated him for all the lies he told about me. But the love was far greater than the hate. He had shared the dark and romantic years of the nineteenth century with me, he was my companion as no other immortal had ever been.'
Anne Rice takes her vampires all over the world in this story. Even to Egypt and to the ancient pyramids. I really liked the references to 'Isis and Osiris' and other Egyptian gods and goddesses.
'The god Osiris was the god of wine to the Egyptians, the one later called Dionysus by the Greeks. And Dionysus was the "dark god" of the theater, the devil whom Nicki described to me when we were boys at home. And now we had the theater full of vampires in Paris. Oh, it was too rich.'
visit the official Anne Rice website
