Anne Rice's The Vampire Chronicles
To date I have completed:
Interview with the Vampire
Queen of the Damned
Memnoch the Devil
I've read like 99% of:
Tale of the Body Thief
The Vampire Armand
I abandoned "Tale" because I hated it.
Armand I didn't finish because I was more or less done with it and got distracted, which commonly happens to me.
I think a legitimate criticism of her later books is that they are indeed too bloated for their own good. I used to think it was just a personal problem - that I suck for not being able to get through how long they were. But a lot of people have this complaint and it seems like a generally accepted idea that her novels could and should be much, much shorter than they are. I mean, I'm not objecting to the copious amount of sex in "Armand" but some of it could have been cut.
I know a lot of people say her first two books were by far her best but I skipped The Vampire Lestat because, from what I was told, it's largely a mess of contradictions of what was in "Interview." And I loved that book! Besides, if I had one great criticism of the series, it's Lestat. Maybe the original idea was "hey, Lestat was a more likable character than Louis. He wasn't constantly moping and trout. So I'll write a book about him instead." But along the way, the Lestat I liked from the first book disappeared. The thing about every later incarnation of Lestat is that EVERYBODY LOVES HIM. I'm so goddam sick of it. Even the characters who hate him actually love him. Maybe, just maybe I could brush this all off as him being delusional, but not for every damned book. And Armand loved him too in his book so there goe sthat theory.
This pretty much sums up how I feel about Lestat and, ironically, it's from my least favorite book. (Tale of the Body Thief)
Lestat: I'm going to weep if you don't stop.
Louis: Weep. I'd like to see you weep. I've read a great deal about your weeping in the pages of your books but I've never seen you weep with my own eyes.
Lestat: Ah, that makes you out to be a perfect liar, I said furiously. You described my weeping in your miserable memoir in a scene which we both know did not take place!
Basically, in my mind, Louis wa right, Lestat is an egotistical douchebag and I don't believe half of what he says or thinks.
Now....getting away from that....
Has anyone here read "Memnoch?" The thing that interested me so much about this book, and allowed me to forget Lestat, was that it wasn't so much a book to me. Oh yes there were characters and a story but I read it mostly as an insight into Mrs. Rice's ideas of spirituality, religion, God, etc.. Of course a lot of people say an artist's works ar ea good way to look into their mind but I never bothered much with that kind of "analysis." But, in Memnoch, it seemed unavoidable to me. The character of Memnoch had so many ideas and speeches and questions that it made me sit back and say "is this Mrs. Rice talking to me right now?" I didn't necessarily mind this because it was intriguing but it was very....different.
So what have you read and what do you think?
