I fell in love reading this book (The Vampire Lestat - Anne Rice)

Member Name: Diane@home

Product:	The Vampire Lestat - Anne Rice
Date:	17/05/02 (195 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: You will be swept into a heady world of blood and lust.

Disadvantages: She does take her time in producing new tales for the chronicles which can leave you in withdrawak but they are always excellent

I have always been a bit of a sucker (forgive the pun) for a bad boy, and here he is the baddest of them all. Lestat De Lioncourt, I could hear him purring the words Anne Rice had written in his seductive French accent. He was telling his story directly to me as I read this book for the first time. I was seduced by the cold French winters, the heady New Orleansian (not a real word I know but the best word to describe the atmosphere created here) temperatures, the torture of immortality and the pain of forbidden love.

The first Anne Rice I ever read was 'Interview with a vampire' and I felt pity for Louis, loved his nostalgia and wished he'd grow up a bit. But with Lestat I slept for a week with my window open in case he should happen by Darlington. I wanted this charismatic vampire to be real!

Lestat is a poor French aristocrat in the 17th century transformed into a vampire by a mysterious benefactor while he is in Paris with his self destructive best friend Nicholas. This novel takes us through the account of Lestat's live and loves up until 1994. He transforms his mother Gabrielle and friend Nicholas into vampires before leaving France forever. Nicholas becomes quite insane and is left behind, Gabrielle goes with her son.

Anne Rice has the remarkable gift of making you believe that everything in her stories is how it should be. It seems normal for Lestat's relationship with his mother to border on incest as they parade around as a vampire couple. Sexuality is the name of the game for the vampires of the world. Male, female, child, adult, mother or sister it doesn't seem to matter to Lestat who is seduced by and seduces the world in which he lives. Although sexuality seems the wrong term really as sex never really enters into the world of the vampire, eroticism is probably a better definition.

A meeting with Armand, the five hundred year old boy leader of the Paris coven of the Children of the Damned, p
roves that Lestat is a creature of the age. Christianity means nothing more to him than it does to the aristocratic French with whom he consorts. Armand it is revealed believes in nothing but needs to be loved and revered, hence he maintains his coven with an iron fist. Lestat breaks the coven and leaves Armand in charge of the Theatre des Vampires visited almost eighty years later by Louis and Claudia.

He then takes to Europe loosing his mother on the way. Only to be found by Marius the oldest known vampire, keeper of 'Those who must be kept' and father of the boy Armand. Marius treats Lestat to a brief history of vampire kind and introduces him to Akasha and Enkil the parents of all vampires. Sat as still as marble these two have existed for 6,000 years and been silent for at least 2,000 of those (what a life huh).

Lestat wakes Akasha who gives him her blood making him much more powerful (vampiric strength is passed on through blood and gained by age) but awakening a vengeful Enkil at the same time.

Marius is forced to send Lestat away to calm the father Enkil. Lestat comes to New Orleans to care for his dying father and while there meets the gorgeous and tragic Louis.

Louis does not take at all well to immortality and despises the act of murder that gives him life. But this is not a part of this book and is chronicled all too well in 'Interview with a Vampire'. After the rejection and near murder by his children Claudia and Louis, Lestat retreats into himself for more than half a century. He is eventually awoken by a Rock group who he patronises and becomes the lead singer for.

It is this group who are shown in 'Queen of the Damned' the new film featuring Stuart Townsend and the greatly missed Aaliyah. There music awakens the Queen of the Damned Akasha and leaves us at a cliff hanger as Lestat is taken from his rest on the night of his first and last Rock concert.

Not a terribly lon
g or detailed overview of this wonderful book but for the rest you'll have to read it. I have to say it is well worth the read as well I was engrossed and didn't put it down until it was finished.

Do not let the less than brilliant film adaptation of 'Interview with a Vampire' put you off this wonderful chronicle. Tom Cruise may be gorgeous but he's altogether too wholesome to be Lestat. Stuart Townsend plays a far better Lestat in 'Queen of the Damned' and looks a lot more like the Lestat of my imagination at least. Each book can be read separately or as a part of the greater picture and each book can wholly transport you into the deliciously erotic world of the vampire. Rice has created a masterpiece here and all that you need to do is hop aboard and enjoy it!

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