My Knight of the Night (The Vampire Lestat - Anne Rice)

Member Name: carolinesite

Product:	The Vampire Lestat - Anne Rice
Date:	16/03/01 (154 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Very addictive read. A must read for readers of the first book.

Disadvantages: None.

I have just finished reading the second book of Anne Rice’s Vampire Chronicles. It has taken just a few days to read. A fatter book than the first, it was compelling reading, and I just could not put it down. I found myself not only reading this at bedtime, but in the middle of the day too.

If you have read my opinion on Interview With The Vampire, you will know that Anne Rice’s style of writing had made me start to fall in love with Lestat, the Master vampire. By the end of this book, I was now truly in love with him. This book is about his story, how he came to be vampire, his search for knowledge about his kind, and about the love and fears he has felt throughout his 200 years of immortality. I wanted to hold him, I wanted to tell him things that I know I cannot. But it wasn’t a feeling of desire. The vampires have no sexual contact of the kind that we know. Their love is displayed through their beauty of each other, and the drinking of each others blood (not that there was a lot of that).

Lestat’s story starts as he rises in present day (mid eighties). He has been under the ground since 1929, a long vampire sleep that only the stronger and older vampires can endure. Although asleep, he has been listening to the changes going on in modern day. The sound of amplified music, moving pictures, and other sounds.
He befriends a rock group, and he is surprised that they have heard of him. They show him the book, Interview With The Vampire, and he reads it over and over again. They obviously think the book is fiction, and that he has taken his name from there. They do not suspect that he is indeed a real vampire.

Louis has told his story to the world, something a vampire must never do; reveal the secrets of the Dark Gift, or mention the names of other immortals. But who could believe it?
Lestat starts to write his own account, starting from before he was a vampire.

He was the young
est son of a Marquis. His father was blind, and his mother was dying. He was known as the ‘wolf killer’ to the villagers, and he befriended one of the villager’s son, Nicholas. Nicholas loved to play the violin, and Lestat loved to hear him play it. They would have conversations about good and evil, whether there was a God and a Devil, and how one day they would be on the stage.
They ran away together to Paris, where they joined a theatre company. Lestat an actor, Nicholas in the orchestra.
One night, a figure burst through their window and took Lestat. It was a vampire. An old spindly looking vampire, named Magnus. Magnus took him to his tower and made him a vampire. He told Lestat that there were plenty of riches in this tower for him to survive. He also told him never to drink blood from mortals after their hearts had stopped. That is all Lestat was to know about his Dark Gift. Magnus threw himself onto a fire. He was left alone. Like a child he cried. “Don’t leave me, Magnus”.

He gradually learnt, by himself, what he had to do to sustain himself. With the riches Magnus had left, he brought the theatre that he so much loved, and he brought his beloved Nicholas the most beautiful violin. Of course no one knew of Lestat’s fate. No one saw him, for a long time he stayed in the shadows. All his communications were done through a solicitor.

He received word that his mother was about to die, and she came to Paris to see her son. He visited her and told her what had happened. He could not bear to see his beautiful mother die, and asked her if she would join him in his world of immortality. She did.

He taught her what he had learnt. Soon they could feel a strange presence. Other immortals. After a fight, they were taken to a vampire coven under an old cemetery. The vampires were dressed in filthy rags, they were like ghouls. They were disgusted that these 2 were livi
ng as outcasts. That they were walking amid mortals. Lestat told them that times had changed, and that they too could be doing as they were. This was his first meeting with the coven leader, Armand. There was a love - hate relationship between the 2. They admired each others beauty, but Armand wanted to rule Lestat. The coven had also imprisoned Nicholas, and had been feeding from him. He would die, but Lestat could not conceive this, so made him a vampire.

After a while, Lestat set Armand up in the theatre that he owned, allowed him to stay in the tower that Magnus had given to him, as long as he took care of Nicholas and the other remaining vampires. Nicholas had hated being given the Dark Gift, and despised Lestat for it.
They changed the name to The Theatre of Vampires, where mortals would come and see (unknown to them), real vampires performing on the stage.

Lestat and his mother left them there, in Paris, in search of the knowledge they wanted to know about how they came to be in existence. They travelled to Greece, Italy and Egypt in search of this, until after 10 years they decided to part ways.

His story goes to reveal how he met up with Marius, the vampire that had made Armand. Marius was the oldest living vampire, centuries old, but was 40 years old forever. He got the answers to his questions, and also learnt of Those Who Must Be Kept.

When Lestat heard of the French Revolution, and that the rest of his family had been killed, he wanted to visit the New World, America. His father had been shipped to safety in New Orleans.

This is where Lestat’s story and Louis story meet, and I shall not go on so as not to spoil anything.
Anne Rice describes beautiful scenery as Lestat travels the Old World. Her writing style is excellent, as is her research into ancient history. You could almost believe this all to be true.
The ending of this book had me ecstatic. I was so happy, and ver
y nearly shed a tear, when an old friend returns to him.

I have now started to read the third of the Chronicles, Queen of the Damned, and as I turned the first few pages, I was overjoyed to see that it is Lestat once again, narrating the story.

(599 pages)

Summary: