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Summary: Anne Rice has done it again! Supurb book!
Review: The Vampire Armand is a wonderful book, sure to thrill all Anne Rice fans! A must have in your collection!
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Summary: Much more satisfying than Pandora!
Review: The Vampire Armand is classic Anne Rice. If you loved Lestat, you'll love Armand. I was a little disappointed in Pandora, but I was completely satisfied with Armand. This book vividly filled some gaps in the history of the vampires that we know and love. I would highly recommend this to any reader of the Chronicals.
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Summary: Over-rich but not all over-done
Review: I hoped that Ms. Rice would write a worthy successor to the first three novels in her Vampire Chronicles. "Body Thief" and "Memnoch" were disappointing sequels; "Armand," too, often misses the mark. Ms. Rice abandons in the first half of this novel the simple, elegant, sophisticated prose of her first three vampire novels. Here she luxuriates in her prose, losing herself in over-rich metaphors and descriptions. Although beautifully written by itself, this prose, in the context of the novel, acts as a filler to offset a lean plot and poorly developed themes. Armand's mortal life is, for the most part, characterized by an exhaustive series of promiscuous adventures rather than by any thoughtful events. Even Armand's dim recollections of his Russian Orthodox upbringing offer no real intellectual depth; they are sensual only. The plot becomes more interesting after Armand's death and rebirth. The novel's themes -- spirituality and physicality, inhuman and human nature, and belief in God -- although ambitious and significant, are thrown at rather than offered to the reader, for example, during Armand's sexual escapades and childhood musings. The discussions between Armand and Marius, especially, seem abrupt and clumsy. They reveal nothing more than what the words themselves say. "Interview," in contrast, is much more successful thematically when, for instance, Armand discusses God and Satan with Louis. Armand's conversation there is important both for its immediate meaning and for what it subtly infers about vampiric nature and Louis' real conflicts. The characters in "Armand" are also not in keeping with their former physical and emotional likenesses. Rice cannot decide whether to portray Armand in a child's body or a young man's body. She uses the latter image in the first three novels, and it infuses Armand with complexity. He should possess a young man's body and an innocent but mature face to suggest that his demonic, almost maniacal, nature is disguised by his angelic physicality. He is "a master of pretense" and paradox. The image of him in "Armand," however, is confused, and it depletes the richness of his character. He is "robust" and "never was a waif" yet he seems a child to others. He is well-developed sexually, inferring puberty, yet he cannot grow a beard. He is not a paradox but a grotesque. For Marius' part, Rice forgets that he had white, not blond, hair in earlier novels as if she wants him to temporarily stand in for Lestat. Emotionally, Armand seems stunted. He has little of the amazing intuition that he demonstrates in the earlier novels until the last part of "Armand." Marius, in the first half, is likewise not his formerly serious self; he is a flamboyant pedofile. He does change, though, after Armand's transformation. The second half of the novel, beginning with Armand's transformation, picks up considerably. The prose is more tolerable, less indulgent, and the characters are more true. Part III is most wonderful. Armand's depiction of the other vampires is the one really mature moment in the novel; it is immensely satisfying and thrilling. I hope that Rice's subsequent novels will retain the language and atmosphere of that moment.
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Summary: SLOW START, PICKS UP LATER.
Review: For the most part, I have really enjoyed the Vampire Chronicles up until Memnoch. After sloughing through that extremely boring and offensive book, I almost didn't pick up another Vampire book. But I decided to give "Pandora" a shot, and was happy to see that Anne Rice had returned to somewhat her original formula for this series. So I decided to give "Armand" a shot.I'm sorry, but I was unimpressed for the most part. Whereas in "Memnoch", Ms. Rice decided to bore us all with her theological views on God, the Devil, and Creation, and turn Lestat into a whimpering idiot, in the first part of "Armand", she decided to infuse us with her S & M fantasies. If I wanted to read about this, I would have picked up her set of pornography books she wrote. The only reason I gave this book a three star rating instead of 1, is that she managed to pull out of it to some degree to finish the book. I have always been curious about Armand, and was looking forward to learning more about him, but somehow the characters in this book never came alive for me as they did in the first three books. I will most definitely wait for the paperback version of her next novel, or get it from the library, rather than waste my money on a hardcover copy of a book that is not up to the previous standards.
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Summary: vintage rice. please do sequel to mummy!!!!!
Review: This is vintage rice. The characters are as erotic as ever. The plot however is somewhat familiar if you are a rice fan. I enjoyed the book but would love to have her do a sequel to the Mummy.
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Summary: A big disappointment for the casual observer
Review: The only other book from the Vampire Chronicles I have read was Interview with a Vampire, which I found to be an engaging story, and also rich in imagery, detail, and plot. In comparison, this book is overblown and sinks from its own weight. I could not even come close to getting through it - both the character development and plot lacked the simple elegance of the original.
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Summary: Simply boring
Review: I just finished the book, and am happy that it's over .. I agree with most of what the reader from New York wrote on October 14, and the one from Northern California on October 18: Once upon a time, Rice's books were a real pleasure .. this one is full of historical inaccuracies, facts in contradiction with some presented in the series previously. The first part with the (to me not too disturbing) homosexual touch might be nice to read, the rest is simply a gathering of confused thoughts and views, sometimes completely out of the context (like the one sentence where she describes Leonardo Di Caprio as a "young and brillant actor", what has he got besides a pretty face ? BTW, if anybody wants to see historical inaccuracies at their worst, watch "The man with the iron mask" .. it's depressing). Anyway, if Anne Rice doesn't spend time really working on her next book, her time is over. Mine with her is (i.e. I won't buy anything else from her).
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Summary: An great improvement over _Pandora_.
Review: I struggled through the first 150 pages or so of this. Up to the point where Armand is given the Dark Gift, it was hard to feel any real empathy with the character. Rice's character development of Armand might have been better served in the early part of the book by presenting a clearer, less disjointed picture of the early growth of his spiritual side. Instead the reader is inured with Armand's introduction to eroticism, most of which struck me as gratuitous. But beyond this point, it was a good read; a fine continuation of the series. I can't say I was happy with Marius's newfound sense of despair regarding mortals, but if Lestat can rebound from his catalepsy, perhaps there's hope for our Keltoi/Roman friend as well.
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Summary: Pleasantly Suprising....
Review: compared to the work that Anne's done recently. Memnoch and Pandora were, I think we'll all agree, mistakes. Servent of the Bones was marginally better. Violin....Violin was so awful that I couldn't force myself to finish it. And I LOVE Rice. But Armand...Armand was probably the best thing she's published since Body Thief. Maybe not quite as good as Body Thief, but up there...Armand was a little self-indulgent for my tastes and I think Rice has gotten a little tied up in the "let's live out my fantasies" phase. Interview and Vampire Lestat seemed to have a real passionate fire to them, like she didn't want to write them but she was driven to...her more recent books have been lacking this. I don't know, we'll see what happens with her next book. I'd have to say that if you're just getting interested in Rice now, read Vamp. Lestat, Cry to Heaven, Feast of All Saints, or The Witching Hour.....or Interview, for that matter. Someone in another review mentioned that Armand seemed to do things that were completely out of character for him....that was the problem I was trying to work out in my head while I read it. That was probably the most disappointing aspect of the book, the distinctly un-Armand behaviors. Still, like I said, it's better than the other recent books Rice has written. Maybe she's got her touch back.
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Summary: A beautifully written book, but...where's the story?
Review: Is it me, or is there no story? Some other reviewers have said it's flat, and I found it to be exactly that. Others have said the inaccuracies drove them nuts; I swallowed them and gave them up to poetic license. The sex I could deal with. The Frankenstein experiment I could not. I eventually started reading this as a poem, and found myself enjoying the beauty of the language, as opposed to looking for a story. The ending made me throw the book down in frustration, and the word "hack" came to mind. I'm sick to death with the continuous "love or lack thereof" theme that these creatures keep searching for. Again, it's pretty prose, and that's about all.
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