Friday, January 29, 2016

The Vampire Lestat Book Review



First off let me start off by saying this is the second book in 'The Vampire Chronicles' series by Anne Rice, the first book being 'Interview with the vampire' which I read in early December 2015 (and loved).

It's told by Lestat. The first book was Louis's POV and was Louis talking about his time with Lestat, but in this book it's Lestat and saying his side of the story including a bunch of stuff not previously known to Louis. It is written just as beautifully as the first book!

I don't want to spoil the book and it's quite hard not to to be honest, but here goes. I loved Lestat's voice and character, the imagery, the writing, the settings, everything! The only bad points, if they can even be called that as it's really my fault, is that I had to look up a lot of words as it's an Adult book and it seems my vocabulary is lacking, so it sometimes took me out of the story and annoyed me but i'm hoping from more reading my vocabulary will expand and stick in my brain. There were a few things here and there (not the vocabulary thing) that made me go o.O but nothing major or that spoiled the book. All that being why I gave it 4, not 5, stars but I still loved it!

At parts it utterly ripped my heart out, and the ending has me craving for more and to find out what happens next! Of course there is more, the third book (which I do have but that's the extent of what I have so far) 'Queen of the damned' and the 12th book in the series is actually expected to come out sometime this year...but I still have books 3-11 to read!

What to say about Lestat? He's arrogant, compassionate and stubborn at the same time and doesn't think things through to possible consequences. He is a vampire in love with humanity and trying to do right in some ways and rebelling in others. I don't know how to describe him really! In 'Interview with the vampire' Louis made him seem much more evil than he really is. In his book you get to understand why, the motives behind what he's done, and much more about him and his history.

While he's great all on his own the secondary characters also have their own personalities! There is Louis, Lestat's mother Gabrielle, Nicki, Armand, Marius, each with a personality all their own and very interesting in their own right! Heck Gabrielle is a force to be reckoned with and I ended up loving her character! She is a strong female character. Not saying I always agree with her but she is quite the force and for certain reasons I just fell in love with her!

The plot and pacing felt good to me. The book is dense in that it takes awhile to get through but I enjoyed every moment and never felt confused by it (other than lacking in my vocab but google helped me there)! Speaking of the vocab I do want to say it didn't feel pretentious, the story wouldn't have made sense otherwise and the words chosen felt carefully and rightfully chosen to accurately portray the story. If you take anything about this away take away the fact I only have a high school education here and the schools around me, aren't the best, not the worst i'm sure but not the best either. There is nothing wrong in that but those that have been to college tend to have a better vocabulary for obvious reasons. I've read some pretentious feeling books before, but not this book, as I could see the words were chosen for a good reason and without them it would not have sounded right at all and in some cases it was just me not knowing anything about the 19th century.

Overall I gave the book 4 stars and do recommend it, if you like the first book "The Vampire Chronicles" anyway and are into vampires that still drink human blood, are creatures of the night, and burn in the sunlight. This book was originally published in 1985.

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