63 of 80 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Chronicles of the vampires, May 3, 2005
This review is from: Complete Vampire Chronicles (Interview with the Vampire, The Vampire Lestat, The Queen of the Damned, The Tale of the body Thief) (Paperback)
Anne Rice revamped the vampire-horror genre with the publication of "Interview with the Vampire," a supernational drama from the vampire's own mouth. It became an unexpected hit, and spawned a series of sequels that came to be known as the Vampire Chronicles. The first four books of the series are compiled here, although the fourth is not up to the excellent standards of the first three.
"Interview With the Vampire" is the story of Louis, a grieving young widower and plantation owner, whose life is turned upside down when he meets the charming vampire Lestat. Lestat offers him a way out: become a vampire. Louis accepts, but once it's done, he finds that vampirism is more than he bargained for -- especially for his conscience.
"The Vampire Lestat" takes a totally different tack, showing us the world through the enigmatic, charming Lestat's eyes. After years of dormancy, Lestat wakes up in time for the early MTV years of the 1980s, becoming a rock star in the tradition of Ozzy and Black Sabbath. And like Louis, Lestat relates his long life's story -- how he became a vampire, his wanderings over the earth, and his investigations into the origins of vampirism itself...
"Queen of the Damned" builds on that research. Lestat's metal music has caused quite a bit of mayhem -- but not this much before: Akasha, Egyptian queen and mother of all vampires, has reawoken from her comalike sleep. The lesser vampires are having strange dreams, some are being murdered by the ruthless queen. Apparently she wants to kill all men. What is more, Akasha has taken a shine to the roguish Lestat himself...
"The Tale of the Body Thief" opens with lonely anti-hero Lestat deciding that he wants to be mortal again. At least temporarily. So he engages in some corpus-swapping with a con man (Danger! Danger, Will Lestat!), and rediscovers the joys (romance with a nun) and miseries (excretion) of being a human being again. The problem is, said con man is not eager to return Lestat's attractive and immortal body once he has it...
Vampiric autobiography is a given in Anne Rice's bibliography -- she has plenty of bloodsuckers telling us about their lives. But Lestat and Louis's were not just the first ones, but perhaps the most compelling and rich, especially since the two had such radically different viewpoints -- including of one another. Is Lestat a heartless fiend, or a roguish good-craving bad boy? I'd lean towards the latter, to be honest.
Rice does stumble in "Tales of the Body Thief," which seems like too flimsy a plot for Lestat and Co., has an unnecessary nun romance, and which has some very gross moments. However, it does give a stunning look at how a vampire would see the everyday life of a human -- all the problems, discomforts, annoyances and loneliness that we all ignore because we're used to it. It's a more personal story than the epic "Queen of the Damned," which deals with all of vampirekind all through history. (In one book!)
Despite the more controversial recent novels, Anne Rice's first Vampire Chronicles are often reckoned to be modern horror classics. Rich, intriguing and far deeper than you'd think vampire fiction would be.
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13 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Best birthday present my husband ever received!, October 4, 1999
By A Customer
This review is from: Complete Vampire Chronicles (Interview with the Vampire, The Vampire Lestat, The Queen of the Damned, The Tale of the body Thief) (Paperback)
My husband received the Vampire Chronicles for his birthday this year. Unfortunately, he has yet to read them for himself (he read them before we got married). I've devoured the first three books, and now am working on Tale of The Body Thief. I can honestly say that Anne Rice now ranks up there with my other two favorite authors. If I would have known that she was truly THIS good, I would have picked up her books a long time ago!
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66 of 87 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Do you really want to live forever?, July 20, 2003
This review is from: Complete Vampire Chronicles (Interview with the Vampire, The Vampire Lestat, The Queen of the Damned, The Tale of the body Thief) (Paperback)
This is a box set of the first four books of Anne Rice's popular Vampire Chronicles series. Her works are immensely popular and have spawned 1 1/2 movies (calling Queen Of The Damned even half a movie is being extremely generous!) and many many sequels. I picked up this box set after being told by numerous people that the first four were worth reading and I was really pleaseatly surprised. (I've heard that the series really goes downhill fast after the The Tail Of The Body Thief)
The vampires in this universe are elegant beings of the night who are very articulate and this traslates to immense description. This may bother some but once you get used to Rice's style, it could best be described as a dreamy flow of the subconscious and it works well for the series. The books take you all over the USA and much of Europe as well and Rice does a great job of creating these vampires that have very human qualities.
The series mainly centers around the title character Lestat. Lestat is a fascianting study of the flawed uber-vampire who does what he wants and refuses to conform to the vampire "rules". He knows he is not perfect but realizes the only way to live through immortality is to enjoy oneself whenever one can. The supporting cast has their fair share of interesting characters and the personalities of the vampires are really the heart of the series.
A couple of things Rice does makes her vampire world so fascinating. The vampires act as their own little microsociety with rules and taboos that are well thought out and extremely interesting. For example the longer a vampire makes before creating another vampire determines how powerfull that new vampire will be. There are complications to living forever that you never would of thought of. The vampires have no sexual urges but instead the act of bloodletting serves as their mental and physical urge for copulation. Vampires don't marry each other but instead have extremely strong emotional bonds with each other and thier own fledglings (when you create another vampire they become your fledgiling) They stay together for an indefinite period until an unknown force breaks their emotional connection. This makes for some fascinating relationships that almost seem like "couples" but without the physical relationship. These bonds are often between same gender vampires and sometimes include three or four vampires. All these interesting parameters make for an web of relationships that frequently change.
The biggest con of the series is that sometimes the prose drags on forever and certain parts could be shorter. They were all good, but actually I thought the fourth book was the best and it was also the shortest.
Bottom Line: An entertaining series that will be most enjoyed by experienced readers and fans of romantic self indulgent nuerotic blood suckers.
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