 "Engrossing" | 2010-07-27 |
| - Reviewed By MoseyOn from Dubai |
| I do not generally read vampire novels. In fact, this is only the third I have read. The first surprise was that I liked it at all. The second surprise was that I liked it as much as I did. And the third surprise was that I liked it more and more as it progressed. After a while it was hard to put down. I have not read any of the current crop of front-shelf vampire fiction, but I have a feeling their vampires are quite different from these. (I'll never know for sure, since they have a target audience that does not include me.) Rice's book takes the form suggested by its title. It is the story of the vampire Louis de Pointe du Lac, as he relates it to a young reporter of some kind (referred to only as "the boy"). Neither the boy's nor the vampire's reasons for the interview are clear, though it doesn't really matter. The main thing is that the vampire's story gets told. To summarize the plot would not really capture what the story is about, or at best it would capture it only on one level. At that level, it is about how Louis became a vampire, about his relationship with the vampires Lestat (who made him a vampire), Claudia, and Armand, about his search for others of his kind, and about the consequences of that search. But that's only a story line to allow Rice, primarily through Louis, to explore vampire nature, the meaning of art and passion (and the degree to which they are tied to mortality), the meaning of immortality in a mortal world, and the question of whether or not such a state can be survived without madness, despair, or both. Louis is a deeply conflicted character, heeding his vampire urgings in order to survive, but retaining enough of his former humanity--or perhaps it is more accurate to say that he continually longs for certain aspects, principally emotional and aesthetic, of his former state--to sink into despair and loneliness even when he is not alone. Rice skillfully juxtaposes the seeming attractiveness of the state of immortality against the realities of what that really means for a creature who cannot truly move on, and must live eternally in a world in which the patterns are set by beings the vampire is inclined to think inferior and transitory (not to mention sustenance). Even the art that Louis loves so much is a human creation. Rice is a very good writer, at times achieving great power in her descriptions of characters and events. I found the description of Louis in the cathedral to be especially powerful. In the end, three themes emerge most strongly. First, the longing for love and companionship, which seems to transcend the human condition. Second, the inability even of art, literature, and other examples of human creativity to connect you with humanity when you are yourself, in a way, a work of artifice and, as Louis ponders, equally reducible to ashes. And third, the pain of loss. In a way, the book is mostly about loss, and about how much more painful loss can be when it is felt by an immortal creature. Louis is ultimately unable to reconcile his incomplete embrace of his vampire nature with his equally incomplete relinquishing of his human nature. "You cannot have love and goodness," he tells Armand, "when you do what you know to be evil, what you know to be wrong. You can only have the desperate confusion and longing and the chasing of phantom goodness in its human form." OK, so it's not great literature, but it is a very interesting, well-written book, with much more depth than I expected. If it's the last vampire novel I ever read (a real possibility), I won't feel I've done too badly. |
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 "Incredible Read" | 2010-07-26 |
| - Reviewed By Yankee2NY from USA |
| I love this book, it is dark and scary and highly addictive! The only problem was that even though I knew the vampire had a French/Louisiana accent, in my head he had a Transylvanian one. I plan on reading the rest of Ann Rice's novels now and wish it hadn't taken me so long to try one. |
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| "She Started It All" | 2010-07-24 |
| - Reviewed By Benjamin C. Pendleton from Boulder City, NV |
| Every single vampire book, movie, and TV series created since 1976 has been directly influenced by this book. If you watch "True Blood", or if you have watched any other vampire movie/TV Series developed since 1976, then you should thank Anne Rice, because they all have been based upon her original idea: vampire stories told from the viewpoint of the vampire and based on the idea that vampires can have human feelings and emotions. Bottom line: Rice invented the modern vampire genre. Why isn't she given due credit for this???? True, her later books do not measure up. But, in "Interview With The Vampire", Rice did something equal to what William Blatty did in his novel and screenplay "The Exorcist". She revolutionized the genre. |
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| "Tai's QuickViews: Four 1/2 Stars))" | 2010-07-15 |
| - Reviewed By Tai from Brooklyn, New York |
Unlike Meyer's Twilight series, Rice's first book in the Lestat cannon oozes with Vampire-lore. Examples:
1. extra sensitive hearing: "beating of the drum" (referring to the man's heart)
2. don't drink after their [hosts] dead or you'll be pulled into darkness and die
3. vampires increase through a kind of slavery
4. vampires move really fast (Lestat's outstretched arm was a blur to "the boy") |
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 "It's ok" | 2010-07-09 |
| - Reviewed By eli darling from SW CO |
| Way better than the movie... but still just ok. I like Anne's writing style - it wasn't that. I think it was more the character I didn't jive with. Oh well, on to Lestat. |
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| "Color my World" | 2010-06-15 |
| - Reviewed By Agatha Christie from Cape Town, S. Africa |
| The super nova novel by Anne Rice sang to ever fiber of my being as a fifteen year old boy attending a private Catholic school. The angst of searching for love and the meaning of both a mortal and immortal existence has continued to haunt both my perspective of the world and my writing ever since. The love between Lestat and Louis was in fact my first glimpse into the M/M world and as their relationship swept across the sliding sands of history so too has it colored my quest for an ever-lasting love. |
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