- The Good: Dark, gothic drama spanning centuries
- The Bad: Some vampiric self-indulgence
- The Literary: Surprisingly historical
The Vampire Lestat features the mortal and immortal life of Lestat de Lioncourt prior to and after the events of Interview with the Vampire. As we know him from Louie’s point of view, Lestat is wild, vicious, and without conscience. Lestat’s own story doesn’t exactly contradict this previous portrayal, but it adds depth. We see Lestat search for love and meaning as he moves from Paris to Cairo to New Orleans to San Francisco.
Lestat’s personality carries this story. He’s driven, passionate, and melodramatic, but insightful. He’s arrogant and impossible, yet compassionate. From his start as the youngest and misunderstood son of an impoverished noble family in the Auvergne province in France. He lives through several centuries and revolutions, searching for answers in each of them. After the tortured misery of Louie’s character, Lestat is exciting, charismatic, and glamourous. I appreciate how masterfully Rice adds nuance in retrospect to Interview, giving the same events new perspective.
But Lestat also considers deep philosophical questions of good and evil. Can a being of pure evil love? What duty does he hold toward the common righteous man? Where is god in all this? As a mortal, Lestat struggles with crippling existential questioning, his only refuge acting on the stage or listening to his best friend Nicolas play violin. He’s rejected by his father, and later by his maker, Magnus, and even by his mother on some level. As an immortal, Lestat finds the structured vampire covens of Armand disgusting, amid which there is much religious commentary. For many years Lestat seeks the oldest vampires so as to find the origins of immortality. He finds Marius, whose early life story unfolds over two thousand years, giving insight into what I expect to find in the subsequent novels. I’ll be continuing this series very soon!
I love that Rice manages to craft a story that’s fast paced and fun, modern and historical, cathartic yet cerebral. Highly recommended for fans of gothic horror and tragic immortality!
“Very few beings really seek knowledge in this world. Mortal or immortal, few really ask. On the contrary, they try to wring from the unknown the answers they have already shaped in their own minds — justifications, confirmations, forms of consolation without which they can’t go on. To really ask is to open the door to the whirlwind. The answer may annihilate the question and the questioner.”