A review by effingunicorns
The Vampire Lestat by Anne Rice

dark slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

1.5

Anne Rice is two for two in telling a story with a strong first half that collapses into utter boredom for the rest of the book. The blatant setup for Queen of the Damned near the end did pick things up again, but it was about two hundred pages too late to save the story it was actually a part of. It was also interesting to see all the positive-sounding talk of godlessness, given Rice's veering hard into Christianity later in life.

I'm sure as a teenager I adored the whole "actually Lestat was (mostly) a good guy the entire time" thing, but as an adult I've read the exact same fanfic too many times to consider this a particularly good execution. It does make me appreciate the IWTV show writers more, that they read all this and then still kept Lestat so horrible, but presented as-is it feels kind of like a narcissist trying to convince you that he's only ever been a victim here and it's the rest of the world that's wrong.

Ultimately, I'm super glad I only committed to reading the first three books instead of giving in to the urge to buy the whole series--I don't think I could take a gajillion more pages of this guy telling his own story.
Expand filter menu Content Warnings