Horror Novel Review Anne Rice The Vampire Lestat

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1985 – Warner Books – Spoiler alerts A sequel to the much superior Interview With The Vampire, which came out almost a decade before. Here. Lestat come out of his self-imposed exile in the 20th Century to find that Louis’s memoirs have turned him into a major celebrity though most people take the work for fiction. Lestat becomes hedonistic, and starts a rock band, while also revealing his own history, to put right the record on many points Louis apparently got wrong. Lestat initially wants revenge on Louis for the lies he told, but he realizes that Louis has made assumptions because Lestat has not told him everything. The sequel elements bookend the main story of Lestat’s origins, and his quest to find the vampires who created him. In the process he will make his own mother into a vampire and create his first lover (Louis will later be made immortal because he reminds Lestat of his first homosexual relationship. The story returns to the 1980’s at the height of the Goth music scene, to finish with a dramatic cliff-hanger making way for book three, The Queen Of The Dammed. Several vampires seen here will recur in the later chronicles, and though many fans prefer the hedonistic headstrong Lestat, I prefer the downbeat serious despair of Louis who is largely reduced to a cameo here. Arthur Chappell