The Vampire Armand (The Vampire Chronicles, Book 6)

Rating:
Summary: TERRIFIC! WONDERFUL!!! LOVED IT!!!! A MUST HAVE!!! =)
Review: I ABSOLUTELY LOVED THIS BOOK. I CANT WAIT FOR ANNE TO COME OUT WITH MORE BOOKS. FANS MUST READ THIS BOOK!!!

Rating:
Summary: A FANTASTIC BOOK!!!!!!
Review: A BOOK YOU JUST HAVE TO READ!IT KEEPS YOU GOIN

Rating:
Summary: Better than Pandora, but not up to Rice's potential.
Review: I read Pandora, the last vampire installment. (read my review!) I hated it. I decided to give my favorite vampire's story a chance by reading The Vampire Armand. Sadly, I was disappointed again. Though better than Pandora, I refuse to believe that Armand was as homosexual as Rice made him. If it was accepted back in the time that he was alive to pleasure and be pleasured by men, I'm sure we didn't need to hear about it every twenty pages during the telling of his mortal life. I am not homophobic, I would just like to see a straight vampire from Anne Rice. The book itself was written well, but it did drone on without an apparent end to the mortal Armand. When we hear about Armand as a vampire, I feel we, as an audience, were cheated. Rice practically skips over four hundred years just to detail maybe half a decade of Armand's mortal life. And what she threw in about Claudia? Pathetic!(I won't ruin it for anyone.) Rice needs to reread her own books and find out what she wants to write about: garbage, smut, or vampires. Because right now, the three are not working as one. But I must say, the ending made it all worthwhile. (ALMOST!)

Rating:
Summary: Simply awful
Review: One quickly gets bogged down in this latest installment of her vampire series. There is more vampire "angst" in this novel than in all of Ms. Rice's other books. Ms. Rice seems to get carried away with her descriptions of landscape and cathederals while the plot plods on endlessly. The next installment of this series, which I will most assuredly get at the local library, needs to have more action and less "poor me" yak.

Rating:
Summary: Somehow you keep on feeling to slap Armand!
Review: Armand is possibly Rice's most wishy washy vampire to date. He never thinks for himself and ends up being unhappy with the results. As for the quality of the story, Rice is back in form. A good tale, but a weak central character.

Rating:
Summary: Take your time!
Review: Well, I must say this book was a dissapointment. Interview with a Vampire was a beautiful book, it capyured all the beauty and romance of the vampires. The Vampire Lestat was one of the best, it's narrator the most amazing vampire of them all. The Queen of the Damned tells you of the beginning of the vampires and their eve, it perfectly fills in the blanks. Then it all starts to go down hill with Tale of the Body Theif and Memnoch (although the philosophy of memnoch was interesting), they were basically rip-offs of Faust. Then there was Pandora, the ultimate mistake, a mess of uninteresting unoriginal crap. And then we come to Armand, one of my favorite characters by far, and what does she do? She ruins him for me. He was always depicted by his tag sign, the "boticelli angel", and now he seems like a clone of so many others. He always had a depth to him and in this book Rice made him mediocre, nothing to really set him apart from the rest. It is so sad because she accomplished it so well in her earlier books with Lestat the "Brat Prince", and Louis the morbid romantic, Daniel the boy interviewer, David the old english gentleman, Maharet the family gaurdian, and Gabrielle the pleasinly dislikeable one. Even with her short lived characters like Nicholas the violinist, Akasha the eve, and Claudia the angry doll. But in Armand she loses all that, her characters like Sybelle and Benji are written as if out of a cookie-cutter, made to be duplicates of so many others, Armand becomes a true monster who neither relishes life nor is saddened by it, he simply exists. And what did she thing she was doing to Marius? He was nowhere near the gaurdian and beloved scholar Pandora and Lestat described, instead he was a pouting, territorial, pedofile! And the parts about the brothels, was Rice living out her own fantasies? Overall I think she to took far to little time to write this, she should have thought about it more and developed the characters and plot better so we wouldn't run in to the clone-personas and retold-far-to-many-times stories. But there were some highlights, some points of beauty that should not be overlooked. Armand/Andrei/Amadeo's memories of Kiev, and the part about his family was definitely the work of the old Rice and should have been longer. And the relationship of Armand and Riccardo was well done, especially the part in the prison. That's about it...oh, except I think if she MUST write another book she should make it about someone we have only heard a little about like Flavius or Santino. So I say, read this book just don't have high expectations.

Rating:
Summary: This story falls flat. too much sex
Review: Unfortunately this story line falls flat. After the dissapointing Memnoch, the Devil and Pandora, I thought Anne Rice may have been rejuventated in returning to her "old, original" crowd. Not so. Some people do not know but Anne Rice once wrote porno books under a pseudo-name. And she comes very -- verrry close in this tome to being pornographic -- especially if homosexual sex between and old man and a young boy especially bother you. Her book is a bust. Don't waste your money.

Rating:
Summary: NOT BAD...BUT...
Review: I love Anne Rice. I have all of her books that she has written. Since I work for a bookstore, I keep an eye out for her next novels. I was very excited when THE VAMPIRE ARMAND came in, considering that Armand is my favorite vampire in the series. After reading it, the end result is that it is OK, but overall boring. It seems as if Anne Rice is recycling material. The story of Armand was seen in the second vampire book, THE VAMPIRE LESTAT. There was very little new info about Armand in this book. After reading her other vampire books, it is obvious that Armand is gay, seventeen (almost the same age as Lestat), and was made by Marius. The only reason for this is his ressurection after MEMNOCH THE DEVIL, believing he died, but in the introduction to his story, he has survived. The beginning, in his days being a slave to Marius, is interesting. Anne has a wonderful way of writing eroticim in her novels, and the ways of life during Armand's time as a mortal. Half way through, after Armand takes his present name, I began to feel bored. The rest of the book I just skimmed though, all the way to the somewhat surprising ending. Anne Rice should think of something NEW, something FRESH to write about. Her last book, PANDORA, was wonderful. VIOLIN was not all that great (all it was was part of her life, add fiction, and a ghost). SERVANT OF THE BONES was a fantastic, original novel, bringing back the type of writting style she had used in her first book, INTERVIEW WITH THE VAMPIRE. VAMPIRE ARMAND is nothing new. She still has a wonderful writing style, but she can go off on a tangient. As a result, all right, but not great. I hope her next novel, VITTORIO, will be something different, and not recycled.

Rating:
Summary: Thank you Anne Rice for sharing your gift of love
Review: After reading "The Vampire Lestat" so long ago, I did not think she could top it. I read "The vampire Armand" within a week. I could not take my eyes from the book. I can't wait to see what she has plans for next. Please Please return to us the Mayfair witches, I do miss them so.

Rating:
Summary: Yawn...
Review: I've read EVERYTHING (except Violin & Pandora) that Anne Rice has written. This was at the bottom of the barrel for her. As a novel in general, It didn't go anywhere, and in the process offered little or nothing new.