In this book, Anne Rice tells a flashback story, until the last scene. Throughout the book, there is an interviewer called the boy who tapes the interview and there is Louis the vampire who is telling the boy about his experiences up to the point where he is talking to the boy, which means there exists in the novel a frame story and a core story.

The frame story consists of the interviewer and Louis. The core story talks about Louis’s adventures and relationships.

The setting, in the beginning, is the late twentieth century San Francisco. Before that, it is Pointe du Lac, a plantation in Lousiana, New Orleans, and Paris, France. The protagonist in the core story is Louis, a vampire of about two centuries, and the antagonist is Lestat who turned Louis into a vampire.

The secondary characters are Claudia and Armand, with Claudia’s role being much greater than Armand’s. Claudia attracted Louis first, then she was made into a vampire by Lestat possibly to keep Louis with him.

I found the relationships among the characters to be the most interesting in the story rather than the events of the story, in which the action never stops. The tension and suspense in the book are also fascinating as does the writing style, and even if the events seem to be far out, the skill of the author adds a believability factor to unbelievable circumstances.

Both Louis and Claudia have mixed feelings about Lestat, and they take some kind of revenge from him, which ends up giving Louis guilt feelings. Lestat, on the other hand, loves them but as a vampire, he is selfish but much more knowledgeable. Then there are the strong love and hate relationships between any two or more vampires, which was interesting, like that of Lestat and Louis, Louis and Armand, and Armand and Santiago and the other vampires. The relationship between Louis and Claudia had more love than any other relationship in the story. These relationships had nothing to do with gender or sex but possibly their type of attraction was due to who these vampires were.

As characterization is superior to the horror elements in the novel, I didn’t think Lestat to be a villain at all. He was a vampire who knew what was there to know about the vampire lore, but wasn’t willing to share it fully, only because he wanted to keep those he was attached to close to him. He was selfish that way. Also, that he didn’t go after vengeance after what Claudia and Louis did to him elevated the way I thought of him.

Then both Louis and Lestat love all arts and spend time in the opera or at the art museum and all vampires have intensely alert senses to shapes, colors, sounds, and smells. In fact, all these details and their peculiar richness make this book very readable.

I don’t normally read horror, but I must have read this book much earlier possibly during the late seventies, as I recalled much of it while reading it the second time this October, and I am not sorry for it. Truth is, I enjoyed it greatly.

having a good time with something different that has different beings as characters.

the characterization, weird though I found most of it, and the relationships.

Claudia's turning to ashes.

read the following books in the series.

is Anne Rice, born and raised in New Orleans, Louisiana. She holds a Master of Arts Degree in English and Creative Writing from San Francisco State University, as well as a Bachelor's Degree in Political Science. She is famous for the series of The Mayfair Witches and the Vampire Chronicles.

I enjoyed reading it and it may be something different and exciting for some readers.

Some horror books stay with their readers and scare them. I didn't feel any such thing with this book at all. What is staying with me are the characters and their relationships.

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Created Oct 25, 2019 at 1:52pm • Submit your own review...