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gh0st_f1sh's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
emotional
funny
mysterious
tense
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Death of parent, Incest, Torture, Alcohol, Suicide, Blood, Murder, Physical abuse, Gore, Violence, Kidnapping, Suicide attempt, Death, Grief, Cannibalism, Emotional abuse, and Vomit
churglem's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
funny
relaxing
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Grief, Blood, Violence, Fire/Fire injury, Murder, Death, and Suicide
Minor: Kidnapping, Slavery, Vomit, Animal death, Trafficking, Excrement, Adult/minor relationship, and Child death
deductionist's review against another edition
dark
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.75
Lestat takes warnings and "no's" as just encouragement. Quoting a line from the book:
“Lestat, what did I say last night?” he asked. “You are the damnedest creature!”
That's it. That's the vibe of this entire book.
“Lestat, what did I say last night?” he asked. “You are the damnedest creature!”
That's it. That's the vibe of this entire book.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Death of parent, Gore, Suicide, Incest, Blood, Death, Injury/Injury detail, Fire/Fire injury, Murder, and Violence
Moderate: Stalking, Alcoholism, Kidnapping, Alcohol, Sexual content, and Adult/minor relationship
Minor: Misogyny
Adding all the content warnings I could think of for this book was a freaking TRIP. This book is not for the faint of heart. A lot of heavy topics are presented here, but I think they're handled well.mothstrand's review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
funny
mysterious
sad
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.75
Content Warnings
Graphic: Blood, Death, Violence, and Murder
Moderate: Suicide and Adult/minor relationship
Minor: Slavery and Racism
loustat__'s review against another edition
dark
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Suicidal thoughts, Death, Death of parent, Injury/Injury detail, Suicide, Cannibalism, Gore, Blood, Incest, and Murder
avie_j's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
emotional
mysterious
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.5
Content Warnings
Graphic: Death, Incest, Injury/Injury detail, Murder, Torture, Violence, Gore, Blood, Body horror, and Fire/Fire injury
Moderate: Suicide, Gaslighting, Suicidal thoughts, Suicide attempt, and Abandonment
Minor: Animal death, Emotional abuse, Toxic relationship, and Domestic abuse
econsidine's review against another edition
adventurous
emotional
mysterious
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.25
If you liked the first book, I guarantee you will really like this second book. I've seen a lot of reviews characterize this as some kind of "redemption" or "justification" of Lestat, and it's not really that, nor is it a retelling of Interview with the Vampire--instead, it's essentially a prequel that makes the first book a lot more complex. It's also a lot more fun to read than the first (and I *liked* the first!) mainly because it's told by Lestat instead of Louis.
Lestat is a great narrator, particularly because he is horrible. He is a misogynist and a terrible friend, with a giant ego, a violent streak, and no impulse control. He's definitely got some kind of incestuous relationship going on with his mother. And he's also a literal monster and kills people all the time. There is no redeeming him--which feels very much on purpose--and yet Anne Rice makes you empathize with him all the same. She never lets you forget how much of a monster he is, but also makes it clear that he feels immense love and pain at the same time. It's a refusal to equate evil with unfeeling that I find refreshing. It can be easy, in both stories and in real life, to try and see abusers/criminals/perpetrators of harm as coldhearted, lacking in self-awareness, and detached from humanity, but that's not necessarily the case. People can be loving and smart and self-aware, passionate and well-intentioned and victimized themselves, and can still do horrible things and be forces for evil. And Rice makes both the evil and the love unavoidable parts of her characters.
As a book, it's also a historical adventure story, moving from Auvergne to Gaul to Egypt to San Francisco and a whole lot of other places in the middle. There's also a lot of other characters' stories in this one, despite the title. The book reads almost like interconnected short stories, which makes sense for a tale about immortals.
And I guess that brings me to the other thing that strikes me about this book, the immortality of it all. Like the first book, but even more so, this book has a lot of philosophical musings about immortality and making it all meaningful and who is best suited to continue raging against that dying light the longest. Really, it feels like a way to discuss how to make an actual mortal lifetime meaningful, with the maybe-easier-to-digest natural phases and metamorphoses of an eternal lifetime acting as comparison. It reads, to me, like something written by someone who is very worried about death and about making life count. Though maybe that is projecting a bit too much. Either way, there's a lot going on here and it hit home for me.
Lestat is a great narrator, particularly because he is horrible. He is a misogynist and a terrible friend, with a giant ego, a violent streak, and no impulse control. He's definitely got some kind of incestuous relationship going on with his mother. And he's also a literal monster and kills people all the time. There is no redeeming him--which feels very much on purpose--and yet Anne Rice makes you empathize with him all the same. She never lets you forget how much of a monster he is, but also makes it clear that he feels immense love and pain at the same time. It's a refusal to equate evil with unfeeling that I find refreshing. It can be easy, in both stories and in real life, to try and see abusers/criminals/perpetrators of harm as coldhearted, lacking in self-awareness, and detached from humanity, but that's not necessarily the case. People can be loving and smart and self-aware, passionate and well-intentioned and victimized themselves, and can still do horrible things and be forces for evil. And Rice makes both the evil and the love unavoidable parts of her characters.
As a book, it's also a historical adventure story, moving from Auvergne to Gaul to Egypt to San Francisco and a whole lot of other places in the middle. There's also a lot of other characters' stories in this one, despite the title. The book reads almost like interconnected short stories, which makes sense for a tale about immortals.
And I guess that brings me to the other thing that strikes me about this book, the immortality of it all. Like the first book, but even more so, this book has a lot of philosophical musings about immortality and making it all meaningful and who is best suited to continue raging against that dying light the longest. Really, it feels like a way to discuss how to make an actual mortal lifetime meaningful, with the maybe-easier-to-digest natural phases and metamorphoses of an eternal lifetime acting as comparison. It reads, to me, like something written by someone who is very worried about death and about making life count. Though maybe that is projecting a bit too much. Either way, there's a lot going on here and it hit home for me.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Confinement, Torture, Body horror, Violence, and Blood
Moderate: Fire/Fire injury, Misogyny, Toxic friendship, Animal death, Death, Domestic abuse, Gore, Toxic relationship, Abandonment, Murder, Suicide, Suicide attempt, and Terminal illness
Minor: Sexual assault, Car accident, and Incest
Sexual assault clarification:crisisalide's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
emotional
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.25
Content Warnings
Graphic: Blood, Death, and Violence
Moderate: Suicide and Terminal illness
Minor: Adult/minor relationship, Child abuse, Kidnapping, and Sexual violence
emtees's review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
funny
sad
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
This is one of the best books in this series. And I say that as someone who is a little, um, skeptical of the narrator.
I first read this book twenty-five years ago and remember it as one of my favorites. It holds up perfectly on a reread. It takes Lestat, the sort-of-antagonist of Interview with the Vampire, and turns him into the hero, not by going forward with his story from the point where we last saw him, but by going back to show us that he was actually the hero all along. I saw another reviewer on this site suggest that this is very much a fanfiction trope, and 100% it is, which is very funny given Anne Rice’s well documented dislike for fanfic. I think if I trusted Lestat’s POV anymore than I trusted Louis’s in the first book, I would find this twist irritating, but after reading these books for decades, I’m convinced that, whether she meant to or not, Anne Rice wrote a saga about a whole coven of unreliable narrators. And from that perspective, there is no question that Lestat is the most entertaining, charming and ridiculous of the lot.
There are things about this book that are extremely odd and should not work. The pacing and story structure are weird. The book starts with Lestat in 1984, reading Louis’s book and deciding he needs to set the story straight, while also embarking on a career as a “rock superstar” for… reasons. We then flash back to France in the 1780s, where Lestat is a young aristocrat-turned-actor. Honestly, the reveal that Lestat was a theater kid explains everything you need to know, but it’s still the first few chapters of the book with a lot to go. The first half of the story focuses on Lestat’s life in Paris with his lover, the tragic musician Nicolas, his initial turning by the vampire Magnus, his early days discovering life as a vampire, and his conflicts with the Children of Darkness, a cult of Satanic vampires led by a familiar character from the last book. This part all makes sense and holds together like you’d expect a story to do. But then, at the end of this section, Lestat embarks on a whole other worldwide journey, and suddenly a huge part of the narrative is taken up with flashbacks-within-flashbacks explaining the lives of a series of other characters, while the worldbuilding and lore expand dramatically. These sections are very interesting to read even if you know that they will eventually get fleshed out into their own books, but there’s something very bold about deciding to spend so much time in a book called The Vampire Lestat on the lives of people who are not Lestat. After that, we get two chapters labeled “Interview with the Vampire,” in which Lestat retells the events of the first book from his own perspective, with a lot of new information and sometimes outright contradicting the things we’ve already read. This will become a thing with the Vampire Chronicles in later books, and it shouldn’t work, but in some ways, it’s the whole appeal of these stories: seeing the same characters and plot lines and even scenes from different perspectives, learning how point-of-view changes what was really going on. Like I said, this is a series about unreliable narrators.
There’s so much that I like about this book - so many different settings and characters and details that come to life on the page. Anne Rice was famous for her descriptive talents, and in some of the other books, her dense prose could drag the story to a halt, but here her ability to set a scene just leads to one iconic moment after another, whether beneath the catacombs of Paris in the 18th century or at a massive rock concert in 1980’s San Francisco. This is the book where I think she really settled on her style for this series; while Interview with the Vampire felt like it was leaning heavily on vampire fiction tropes even as it played with them, The Vampire Lestat is entirely it’s own thing, and the characters in it aren’t like any other vampires. The unique cast, with their passionate, melodramatic personalities and tragic, longing relationships will stick with you.
Also, there’s a car chase, complete with explosions, and how many gothic stories can say that?
I first read this book twenty-five years ago and remember it as one of my favorites. It holds up perfectly on a reread. It takes Lestat, the sort-of-antagonist of Interview with the Vampire, and turns him into the hero, not by going forward with his story from the point where we last saw him, but by going back to show us that he was actually the hero all along. I saw another reviewer on this site suggest that this is very much a fanfiction trope, and 100% it is, which is very funny given Anne Rice’s well documented dislike for fanfic. I think if I trusted Lestat’s POV anymore than I trusted Louis’s in the first book, I would find this twist irritating, but after reading these books for decades, I’m convinced that, whether she meant to or not, Anne Rice wrote a saga about a whole coven of unreliable narrators. And from that perspective, there is no question that Lestat is the most entertaining, charming and ridiculous of the lot.
There are things about this book that are extremely odd and should not work. The pacing and story structure are weird. The book starts with Lestat in 1984, reading Louis’s book and deciding he needs to set the story straight, while also embarking on a career as a “rock superstar” for… reasons. We then flash back to France in the 1780s, where Lestat is a young aristocrat-turned-actor. Honestly, the reveal that Lestat was a theater kid explains everything you need to know, but it’s still the first few chapters of the book with a lot to go. The first half of the story focuses on Lestat’s life in Paris with his lover, the tragic musician Nicolas, his initial turning by the vampire Magnus, his early days discovering life as a vampire, and his conflicts with the Children of Darkness, a cult of Satanic vampires led by a familiar character from the last book. This part all makes sense and holds together like you’d expect a story to do. But then, at the end of this section, Lestat embarks on a whole other worldwide journey, and suddenly a huge part of the narrative is taken up with flashbacks-within-flashbacks explaining the lives of a series of other characters, while the worldbuilding and lore expand dramatically. These sections are very interesting to read even if you know that they will eventually get fleshed out into their own books, but there’s something very bold about deciding to spend so much time in a book called The Vampire Lestat on the lives of people who are not Lestat. After that, we get two chapters labeled “Interview with the Vampire,” in which Lestat retells the events of the first book from his own perspective, with a lot of new information and sometimes outright contradicting the things we’ve already read. This will become a thing with the Vampire Chronicles in later books, and it shouldn’t work, but in some ways, it’s the whole appeal of these stories: seeing the same characters and plot lines and even scenes from different perspectives, learning how point-of-view changes what was really going on. Like I said, this is a series about unreliable narrators.
There’s so much that I like about this book - so many different settings and characters and details that come to life on the page. Anne Rice was famous for her descriptive talents, and in some of the other books, her dense prose could drag the story to a halt, but here her ability to set a scene just leads to one iconic moment after another, whether beneath the catacombs of Paris in the 18th century or at a massive rock concert in 1980’s San Francisco. This is the book where I think she really settled on her style for this series; while Interview with the Vampire felt like it was leaning heavily on vampire fiction tropes even as it played with them, The Vampire Lestat is entirely it’s own thing, and the characters in it aren’t like any other vampires. The unique cast, with their passionate, melodramatic personalities and tragic, longing relationships will stick with you.
Also, there’s a car chase, complete with explosions, and how many gothic stories can say that?
Content Warnings
Moderate: Incest, Mental illness, and Suicide
Minor: Adult/minor relationship
One of the main relationships in the story is incestuous; the characters talk about physical attraction to each other, though there is no sexual contact. A major character commits suicide off-screen after experiencing mental illness.claire_3lyse's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
emotional
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Terminal illness, Violence, Death, Animal death, Blood, Murder, and Suicide
Moderate: Abandonment and Kidnapping
Minor: Car accident, Fire/Fire injury, Gore, Adult/minor relationship, Alcohol, Excrement, Injury/Injury detail, Incest, Sexual content, Child abuse, Child death, Torture, Vomit, Slavery, Toxic relationship, and Trafficking