[books] Anne Rice - The Vampire Chronicles

[Neil]

It's been years since I've finished a book, my already hyper-active concentration span shattered by smartphones, forums, and the internet in general.  However, I've plunged back in, and am loving it.  After Chris Donald's "Rude Kids" I was hoking around, thinking about what to read next, when I found an old copy of Interview With The Vampire.  I remembered loving it first time round, and started flicking through it.  I landed on a crucial moment between Lestat and Claudia, and that was it, I was hooked, and ploughed through the whole thing again in a matter of days. Was so absorbed in it that I would read it while walking around the flat, and idly wondered if I could still somehow manage to continue with the story while ironing a shirt.

I grabbed a copy of The Vampire Lestat from Amazon, and will have that finished in a day or two.  At first, I thought I wouldn't like it at all, as the initial setting up of the story -

Spoiler alert

that Lestat wants to be a star in a heavy metal band...urgh!

[close]

just didn't do anything for me.  However, the book quickly leaps back to gothic times, where Rice is in her element, and she proceeds to fill in the story of this fascinating beast, while setting up the reasoning behind his modern-day aspirations.  So yeah, loving it.

Interview With The Vampire, though, is really quite special.  Of course, it's such a wonderful premise to see the story being told from the monster's point of view, which I think I recall being a conceit that Frankenstein dabbled with.  Rice's vampires have real weight and power to them, they are fundamentally tragic creatures, albeit ones blessed with preternatural senses that allow them to drink in the world, and their victims, with an intensity that makes her writing sparkle.  They are complex, multi-faceted beings who find the "Dark Gift" of eternity far more problematic than they'd ever have initially considered.

[Pijlstaart]

I'm not an avid reader but I was under the impression that she led the charge of wanky vampire chick-lit, so even though I quite liked her writing style, she has a lot to answer for on that account. I've read Interview with the Vampire but no more, having heard that they march rapidly downhill to "Blood Canticle", the site of her famous amazon rant.