Product Description

'Ah, the taste and feel of blood when all passion and greed is sharpened in that one desire!' Lestat: a vampire - but very much not the conventional undead, for Lestat is the truly alive. Lestat is vivid, ecstatic, stagestruck, and in his extravagant story he plunges from the lasciviousness of eighteenth-century Paris to the demonic Egypt of prehistory; from fin-de-siecle New Orleans to the frenetic twentieth-century world of rock superstardom - as, pursued by the living and the dead, he searches across time for the secret of his own dark immortality.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #10596 in Books
• Published on: 1991-12-01
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 560 pages

Review
'Dizzying narrative flights ... as brilliant as the first; it is funnier, wilder and more disturbing' - New York Times ** 'A rich and unforgettable tale of dazzling scenes and vivid personalities - Library Journal

Vampires are getting classier. Rice's formidable Lestat (given a bad press by his protege Louis in the author's Interview With a Vampire, 1976) sets the record straight with his story - from 18th-century fang-y to 20th-century rock star - all in Rice's faintly erotic, red-velvet-tasseled prose, festooned with swags of philosophical-theological expository flights, intra-vampirian warfare and sanguinary nightcaps. The seventh son of an impecunious French nobleman, Lestat, the family hunter and wolf-killer, who with his soul-mate Nicholas, another rebel, pondered the "meaninglessness" of the universe, was initiated into the Dark Gifts of the vampire in Paris. All, the "taste and feel of blood when all passion and greed is sharpened in that one desire!" But Lestat as vampire is in trouble almost immediately with the vampire establishment, since he loves living as a mortal and wants to do good. To save his beloved mother from an imminent death, there's that blood-for-blood ceremony, and zingo! Mother becomes the luscious "Gabrielle," charter coven member. She'll join him in a sectarian battle with Vampire Armand's cemetery gang, who've captured Nicholas (Lestate rescues him but later can't resist merging circulatory systems). Eventually, in narratives by Armand. and Marius, keeper of ancient Egyptian gods and vampirian annals. Lestat will learn of the vampires' complex history. It's rooted in Earth Mother cults and took on the coloration of various periods and places - hence the sectarian battling of demonic immortals. Rice dots Lestat's tale with some marvelous chillers: a giant killer-god on the march; a splendid crypt entrance before a terrified congregation; night prowls and rock-concert screams with telltale "tiny white faces" in the San Francisco audience. But worry not: vampire rules dictate that mortals are perfectly safe in Vampire Bars. A vampire bonanza in appropriate dark, humid, spider-web narrative - Rice's specialty. One giant step beyond Bela. (Kirkus Reviews)

About the Author
Anne Rice is the author of the celebrated series of gothic novels featuring the vampire Lestat, and as Anne Rampling and A.N. Roquelaure she is one of the best contemporary writers of erotic fiction.

Customer Reviews

Amazing, better than IWTV
This book was brilliant, in my review for IWTV I said that was the best book I had ever read, but this was better.
The first part of the story is all about Lestat's journey and how he became what he is, very much Louis's story in IWTV but was written so much better than Louis's. I love how Ms Rice writes this character and I found Lestat amazing to read about, i just couldnt put the book down. I have also read Queen of the Damned and that is also a wonderful book, but for me of the 3 books in the vampire chronicles, this one stands out the most. I loved finding out why Lestat was the way he was in IWTV and you really understand why after reading this.
The films that were made are brilliant but are nothing compared to the books, these are def something that will stand out in my book collection and I will read over and over again, as I am sure I will pick up bits I missed the first time around.

Good stuff.
The first book in the series doesn't give us the back-story of the evil Lestat. The vampire who made the first novel's narrator.

In this one we finally get to hear it. Lestat and his boyfriend run away to Paris, and Lestat is turned by the ancient Vampire, Magnus; leaving Lestat with more power than a newly-made Vamp should have. The story then progresses through the years as Lestat De Lioncourt travels Europe exploring and searches out the mythical Vampire Marius.

The tale is "told" by Lestat, and when we get back to the present day he is a rock-star, trying to cause as much trouble as possible by blaring the truth about Vampires out into the crowd and across the air-waves. All this gets him into big-trouble, and that story is the basis of the next book in the series - The Queen of the Damned, which I have just started.

This one, though, is definitely worth the read

Disappointing
"The Vampire Lestat" tells to story of Lestat in modern times as a rockstar. A good premise for a book, but unfortunately Anne Rice dwells too much on his past history to the point that you lose interest. Anne Rice's writing style is simply not very good, it lacks eloquent prose and adequate descriptions. Her tone is also very dull and monotonous to the point of banality.

The "Vampire Chronicles" is going nowhere and I won't be continuing with the series, as it is trimmed for mass market readers.