Jennifer
Rating:
Review
This is the first book in a series about how the main character, Louis becomes a vampire. The setting revolves around a young man interviewing Louis, where Louis describes his life in New Orleans before becoming a vampire, in detail his creator, Lestat, and then later, their counterpart – a young girl named Claudia who is snatched from sure death as a very young girl only to be immortalized forever as a vampire-girl who never ages past seven years old. Anne Rice does a great job of almost making you believe in vampires (if you don't, that is) and how they are created. This book tells a tale of a hateful, and codependent relationship between the three vampires, their many years in New Orleans, and then their travels throughout Europe. Constantly, they are looking for others of their kind, and their origin. At the end of this story, they meet Armond, a vampire we become more acquainted with in the next book in this series,
The Vampire Lestat. This book is sure to please you if you like a good supernatural read, although I found it to be tedious at times, as it is a very long and extremely descriptive book.
Best Line:
Louis is speaking to his interviewer and describing Lestat's love for killing young men in their prime of their youth: "You see, they represented the greatest loss to Lestat, because they stood on the threshold of the maximum possibility of life. Of course, Lestat didn't understand this himself. I came to understand it. Lestat understood nothing."
Suzanne
Rating:
Review
With this book, Anne Rice took vampires beyond the horror genre into a new kind of dark thrill. In this first of her vampire chronicles, Rice begins to show us the sensual, almost Goth-hip side of vampire life. Louis, an 18th century Creole landowner in Louisiana, is the vampire of the title. He chose life as a vampire over death, and spends the rest of eternity regretting it. Forever clinging to his human nature, he is deeply lonely, and forever agonizing and philosophizing over being among "the damned". He can't relate to Lestat, the convincing vampire who made him, at all. Lestat actually revels in being one of the living dead, with a splendid sense of decadence. Claudia, the vampire trapped in a child's body, and Armand, oozing bad boy passion and intensity, make up the rest of the cast. It's twisted and sick, not to mention unnerving, but in a good way.
Best Line:
"You're dying, that's all; don't be a fool." (pg. 22)
