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A review by emtees
The Vampire Lestat by Anne Rice
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.