The Vampire Lestat (Turtleback School & Library Binding Edition) Book

Dear Anne Rice:

NOT WORTHY.

Signed, All Fictional Vampires Who Are Not Lestat

This was a re-read for me, but in all honesty, I don't think I was ready for this book the first time I read it. Or at least, I didn't appreciate it for the sheer masterpiece of storytelling that it is, and it's not just the mood and the world and the mythology and the fast-moving plot -- more than anything, it's the characters.

Lestat, of course, Rice's 'brat prince', arrogant and compassionate and impossible, all at the same time -- he'd be enough to carry any book, imo, but the secondary characters are just as layered and bewitching, probably because we see them through Lestat's eyes. Nicki and his endless internal darkness; Armand, who manages to be both tragic and terrifying; Gabrielle, who seems like a force of nature; and even Louis, the whiny, unreliable narrator from Interview comes off as beautiful and mysterious, the star-crossed love of Lestat's afterlife. I swooned through the last chapter.

I didn't care for the places Rice took this series after Queen of the Damned, but for me, Lestat continues to define the vampire-as-anti-hero genre. No other blood-sucker comes close.