The Vampire Lestat: The Vampire Chronicles (Vol 2) - Anne Rice

Advantages: A must for readers of the first chronicle. Beautifully written.
Disadvantages: None whatsoever.

I have just finished reading the second book of Anne Rice’s Vampire Chronicles. It has taken just a few days to read. A fatter book than the first, it was compelling reading, and I just could not put it down. I found myself not only reading this at bedtime, but in the middle of the day too. If you have read my opinion on Interview With The Vampire, you will know that Anne Rice’s style of writing had made me start to fall in love with ...
...about his kind, and about the love and fears he has felt throughout his 200 years of immortality. I wanted to hold him, I wanted to tell him things that I know I cannot. But it wasn’t a feeling of desire. The vampires have no sexual contact of the kind that we know. Their love is displayed through their beauty of each other, and the drinking of each others blood (not that there was a lot of that). Lestat’s story starts as he rises in ... Read review

Advantages: An amazing believable world, Can't put it down!
Disadvantages: Can't put it down!

...decided to start writing about the Vampire Chronicles at the second one! Odd maybe, but an Interview with a Vampire, the first book of the series, is very well known now, especially after the release of the film. I decided to start with the next one along, The Vampire Lestat, as I felt that this is where you can really start to enter the world that Anne Rice has created. So what are the Vampire Chronicles? The Vampire Chronicles are based around ...
...by some of the older vampires. Although an Interview with a Vampire began with Louis Pont du Lac, it is Lestat who is the central figure for the Chronicles. I will explain more later! The Vampire Lestat begins in the mid 1980's where Lestat is woken by listening to a rock band playing nearby. He tells you how the world looks through his eyes, as he has been asleep since the last time that Louis saw him. He then proceeds to tell his story: He begins ... Read review

Advantages: This is the definitive work of Vampire fiction of recent times, if not ever.
Disadvantages: None whatsoever

...entire and wholly believable as the one in which we live. The sheer scope of this particular novel is what makes it stand out at the definitive vampire novel of modern time. Charting the life of the intensely charismatic Lestat from his early childhood through to adulthood as a human, and then onward into his life after receiving the 'Dark Gift', I defy any person not to fall hopelessly in love with this character. Even through the most chillingly ...
...to detail is exemplary, making the whole book leap into life. Out of all her books, this and 'Queen of the Damned' which continues the story as this leaves off, are the ones which should have been immortalised on film. Upon reading it the images immediately spring to life. The predecessor 'Interview with the Vampire' too was a great novel, but the span of time between that and this, her second novel in the series, shows a leap in literary skills ... Read review

Advantages: Suspense and drama in the usual style by Ms Rice
Disadvantages: None

...Following on from Interview with the Vampire, Anne Rice wrote The Vampire Lestat as the second part of The Vampire Chronicles. As a quick recap (but if you haven’t read Interview with the Vampire or seen the film, this will mean nothing to you!), Lestat was Louis’ creator in Interview with the Vampire and well, wasn’t considered to be a popular ‘vamp’ by Louis in his narration. Lestat was regarded by Louis, as a bit ...
...and Claudia (another child of the devil-spawn, Lestat who was this time a real child) got a bit upset by this, felt Lestat was a nasty bit of work, and too possessive by far and tried to kill him – did they succeed? Well, would Rice have written a follow up from the perspective of Lestat if they had? Lestat’s narrative starts with his recent ‘rising’ from living in disgrace in an old ramshackled house in New Orleans and describes ... Read review

Advantages: Takes all of the good aspects of 'Interview with a Vampire', and suffuses them with the joy and passions of the inimitable Lestat.
Disadvantages: Not really 'pure horror', more darkly gothic atmosphere.

'The Vampire Lestat' was the sequel to the radical 'Interview with the Vampire', and was the cement that made the Anne Rice vampire machine take true root in the subconscious. A better book by far (though the first too was very good), the difference lies mostly in the narrator. Where Louis, the interviewee of the title in the first, was made solemn and guilt-wracked by his undead condition, Lestat is wild, impetuous and joyful. Those who read the ...
...the first place, and his companion for many years. By the end of novel the first, Lestat was in poor condition, made pathetic by his inability to comprehend the vast changes that the 20th Century had brought to the world. At the start of 'The Vampire Lestat', he gets the hang of it, and embraces it with maniacal joy. The excuse for the narration is a fun one - 'Interview with the Vampire' was indeed published, and Lestat is annoyed at what he sees ... Read review