The Vampire Chronicles/The Queen of the Damned/The Vampire Lestat/Interview with the Vampire

Rating:
Summary: This is the best book I've ever read.
Review: It was great! These books were so wonderfully emotional and dark, I could practically see in my mind's eye Lestat and Louis, and I could feel the strength of the old ones.

Rating:
Summary: The Vampire Chronicals
Review: Of course the Vampire Chronicals has grown larger than these three books, but sometimes not for the better. These three are the best of the batch. It starts with "Interview" as Louis, a 200 year old vampire tells his life story to a young reporter. It is certainly the deepest, darkest, and more personal of the three, which was how Mrs. Rice was feeling at the time, as her young daughter had just died (comparable with Louis's heart brake when Claudia was killed). The next one is "Lestat". Lestat wakes up from an eighty year slumber and becomes a famous rock star in the tradition of Gene Simmons or Alice Cooper. But the majority of this book has to do with Lestat's education as a fledgling vampire in 18th centry France and his attempt to find the vampire teacher, Marius. In the third, "Queen", Lestat has angered the other vampires of the world by telling humans the legends and secrets of the vampires (disgised as music videos). As other blood drinkers are set to attack him, the Queen herself, the oldest and most powerful vampire in existance, saves Lestat, and offers him a position as her king. This book tells the origin of the vampire in early, pre-history Egypt.
This set of books sets up an interesting cast of charactors. they all represent some piece of humanity. Louis is loss and pain. Lestat is the devil may care lover of life who is a snob and shuns authority. Armand is the cold and distant object of beauty. Marius is the father figure they all obay, for the most part. There are others, like Claudia the willfull brat child.
This series dose not have as much action and violence as you'd expect from a horror novel, and they aren't really scary. They are more like a soap opera with ghosts and vampires (like a hipper version of "Dark Shadows"). There is a lot of meditation on the nature of good and evil, a lot of philosophy as to what it means to be powerful, and the need to kill, and endless moralizing. Religion is touched on briefly. Some people might find this fascinating, others endless whinning. It's like Plato, with murders here and there.

Rating:
Summary: The Vampire Chronicals
Review: Of course the Vampire Chronicals has grown larger than these three books, but sometimes not for the better. These three are the best of the batch. It starts with "Interview" as Louis, a 200 year old vampire tells his life story to a young reporter. It is certainly the deepest, darkest, and more personal of the three, which was how Mrs. Rice was feeling at the time, as her young daughter had just died (comparable with Louis's heart brake when Claudia was killed). The next one is "Lestat". Lestat wakes up from an eighty year slumber and becomes a famous rock star in the tradition of Gene Simmons or Alice Cooper. But the majority of this book has to do with Lestat's education as a fledgling vampire in 18th centry France and his attempt to find the vampire teacher, Marius. In the third, "Queen", Lestat has angered the other vampires of the world by telling humans the legends and secrets of the vampires (disgised as music videos). As other blood drinkers are set to attack him, the Queen herself, the oldest and most powerful vampire in existance, saves Lestat, and offers him a position as her king. This book tells the origin of the vampire in early, pre-history Egypt.
This set of books sets up an interesting cast of charactors. they all represent some piece of humanity. Louis is loss and pain. Lestat is the devil may care lover of life who is a snob and shuns authority. Armand is the cold and distant object of beauty. Marius is the father figure they all obay, for the most part. There are others, like Claudia the willfull brat child.
This series dose not have as much action and violence as you'd expect from a horror novel, and they aren't really scary. They are more like a soap opera with ghosts and vampires (like a hipper version of "Dark Shadows"). There is a lot of meditation on the nature of good and evil, a lot of philosophy as to what it means to be powerful, and the need to kill, and endless moralizing. Religion is touched on briefly. Some people might find this fascinating, others endless whinning. It's like Plato, with murders here and there.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent... Edge-of-your-seat reading!
Review: These 3 books were amazing... a friend on-line pushed me into reading the first, and I eventually borrowed the second and third from my English teacher... I couldn't stop! Lestat, Louis.. they're wonderful characters. Marius, Pandora, the same. But Armand has always been my favourite. Always has, always will. I am absolutely AMAZED at the way Anne Rice writes, and I am drawn to her books like a pencil to paper!