Most helpful customer reviews
|
|
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A different perspective, Nov 14 2002
You are, of course, familiar with vampires. You've heard the stories, seen a few movies, and been glared at by plastic masks on halloween. If I asked, you would tell me all about coffins, crosses and stakes, garlic, blood and bats.But have you ever seen the world through a vampires eyes? Anne Rice has written a series of books that lets you do just that. This boxed set contains the first four books of the Vampire Cronicles, a different style of vampire fiction. In the first book "Interview with the Vampire", the reluctant killer Louis tells us in rich narrative all about what being a vampire is. He tells how the common myth is sometimes ridiculous, but at other times painfully acurate. His voice is unique, and the brooding darkness of this vampire-tale is truly haunting. Louis is full of guilt and remorse over the lives he has to take, and all the pain and suffering he brings about. He believes himself to be damned, a creature of the devil, with no right to even exist. He tells how the fascinating Lestat made him a vampire, of their clashes and uneasy coexistance. Lestat is unpredictable, sometimes unbelievably cruel, while Louis is so human it hurts. And when the child Vampire Claudia enters, things become darker and more dramatic than ever before. The rich descriptions of colonial New Orleans, of Paris and the eternal night are a true delight to read, and well worth the time. The next books in the series belong not to Louis but to Lestat himself, out to defend his name and tell his side of the story. From now on Lestat is the star of the show, and he would not have it any other way. Lestat is character who demand attention, sometimes even speaking directly to his audience. He is completely different from Louis, and so the books are different. But always there is the darkness, and the eternal night. If you have ever wondered what it is like to be a vampire, than these are the books for you.
|
|
|
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Bloodsuckers, Mar 22 2007
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.
|
|
|
5.0 out of 5 stars
Vampiristic? No, Rather..., May 25 2004
These stories making up The Vampire Chronicles are not about vampires, really, as one might first perceive. The main characters, and really all of them, are vampires, yes, but there is a much, much deeper essence to the stories. These books are not about vampires, but about understanding of life, love, loss, and survival of mind. If you want to look at it like this, you could say that these stories are about regular human life, human strugle and human passion. The only differences are that the stories are dragged out over hundreds of years, and they contain the understandings of generations and generations, and feelings and understandings are magnified by thousands to attain the grove of vampire characteristics.
|
|
|
Most recent customer reviews
|
