Goes for the jugular (The Vampire Lestat - Anne Rice)

Member Name: nlingwood

Product:	The Vampire Lestat - Anne Rice
Date:	03/08/00 (35 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: A story with bite

Disadvantages: Garlic and crosses don't work

At once a sequel and a prequel to Interview with the Vampire, this fleshes out the charming, bloodthirsty Lestat. From a new perspective, Anne Rice develops her stories of the vampires that stalk the shadows. Again, they are shown as complicated characters, especially the anti-hero Lestat himself, with his talents and dreams. But his flamboyance attracts the attention of a creature of the night, who turns Lestat into an immortal vampire.

From pre-Revolutionary France, to Egypt, to the modern US, Lestat plays out his ambitions and dreams of acclaim. Because this vampire wants not just blood, but admiration and love. Arrogant and ambitious, he disrupts a group of cemetery vampires that seem closer to the traditional image. And during his travels he discovers a mythology of the vampire curse, before the story ends in the present day.

Lestat's story, though, doesn't end. He, and many of the other dramatic characters, reappears in the sequel, justifying the series' title of The Vampire Chronicles. Just as Lestat is brasher, more flamboyant than Louis from Interview with the Vampire, his life (or death) is told in more lavish style. Lestat comes to relish and enjoy his vampire nature, and as readers so do we. An enthralling read

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