Interview with a Vampire - Anne Rice

Advantages: Great reading, a must read for anyone that has seen the film.
Disadvantages: None

...I enjoyed the film, Interview with the Vampire, and my sister was raving how good the books by the author were. Anne Rice has written quite a few books, which she calls The Vampire Chronicles, and Interview with the Vampire is the first volume in the series. It took just under a week to read. I spent a couple of hours each night on it, until I had finally finished it. I had forgotten how much description from an author goes into a book, and this ...
...book is based on an interview with a vampire and a reporter in modern day. They are referred to as ‘the vampire’ and ‘the boy’. The vampire begins to tell his story to the boy, who at first is very nervous of the vampire, but after the vampire assures him that he is not about to attack him, he gradually feels at ease. Louis (the vampire), was a young man that had settled on a Plantation in Louisiana. He came to the new world ... Read review

Advantages: See op
Disadvantages: See op

...on a long journey Interview with the vampire – The first volume of the Vampire Chronicles seemed to be a natural choice. · Don’t judge a book by it’s cover? This black tome features golden gothic writing and an eerie picture of a pale man with gushing tributes strewn all over the back, ‘ One of the most wonderful, erotic, sensual books ever written’~ Sting’ This quote alone almost had me starting to read in ...
...· Are you sitting comfortably? And so my journey into the darkest recesses of Rice’s mind and the altogether sunnier realms of London began. The main character Louis begins narrating his tale to the keen, young journalist and I can almost feel a Dictaphone in my hand. The story begins many years before in New Orleans with Lewis and his sire (a sire is the person who makes somebody a Vampire) Lestat. From the onset we are given a glimmer ... Read review

Advantages: classic vampire book
Disadvantages: very depressing.

...called Daniel is offered an interview with a man who claims to be a vampire. At first daniel is sceptical, but as the evening wears on, he begins to change his mind. The man who talks to him is a vampire called Louis, who had once been a plantation owner. brought down by despaire after the loss of a loved one, Louis has no desire to live, but when a vampire offers him an eternal life of death, he takes this. The vampire is Lestat. There is a strong ...
...and adores the vampire who changed him, and in this first novel, you don't get much insight into how Lestat feels about Louis. Their little family is completed when, between them, they make a child Vampire, Claudia. Seeking to escape from Lestat, Claudia and Louis attempt to kill him, flee to the old world, where they meet the paris vampires, and their grotesque theatre. Armand offers Louis the answers he has long been craving, but Armand is jealous ... Read review

Advantages: Unique perspective on the vampire mythos
Disadvantages: Lapses in logic, realism sometimes sacrificed

I had minimal experience with Anne Rice before reading this novel. I had read "The Mummy" a long time ago, and it didn't do much for me at the time. My tastes have changed, however, so I decided to reacquaint myself with Rice's work. On the back cover of the US paperback, there is a quote from the Boston Globe which reads "If you surrender and go with her, you have surrendered to enchantment, as in a voluptuous dream". I couldn't agree more, since ...
...suspend disbelief in order to gain any enjoyment at all out of this story. Before you jump to the conclusion that this is a negative review, please note that I have given this work 4 stars out of 5. Briefly, this story is exactly what the title suggests: it's a first-person tale told through the eyes of a vampire. The interviewer (identified only as "boy") sits with Louis the vampire and documents his life story. There are many things with these ... Read review

Advantages: Essential reading for horror fans - a novel which changed the vampire sub-genre forever.
Disadvantages: Not really 'pure horror', more darkly gothic atmosphere.

'Interview with the Vampire' marked the start of what was to become a one-woman franchise for Anne Rice, and today is often thought of alongside her current offerings in the vampire chronicles series. What is often forgotten is the vast impact the novel had on the genre when it first appeared in 1976. It was, in essence, a revolution. As the novel begins, a young man sits in a darkened room, telling the macabre story of his life to a young reporter. ...
...man, Louis, is impossibly old, is in fact a bona fide vampire. The narrative then takes us into Louis first person account of his life as a card-carrying member of the undead, from his dark birth at the hands of the wild vampire Lestat, to the turning of the child Claudia and the Theatre of Vampires in Paris… this is an imaginatively blend of historical setting and self-discovery. Told somewhat solemnly (Louis, for all that he has a god heart, is ... Read review