GDR Book Club: The Vampire Lestat

This was a gift given to me by a friend. I haven't had a chance to read it until about January.

Anne Rice has a way with imagery and characterisation that makes me melt. Since The Vampire Lestat is a first-person account, it's incredibly intimate. That works to the book's credit as it's very easy to get immersed. I was thrown into Lestat's life right along side him. I shook my head; I disapproved. I was emotionally swayed, and most of all, I was taken away by Lestat's way of speech. My good friends, I have fallen in love with Lestat de Lioncourt. (Even while writing this, I realised that my full name would sound amazing with 'de Lioncourt' at the very end, hoho!)


To quote Lestat himself,

Dear God, this is love. This is desire.
And all my past amours have been but the shadow of this.

So true. So true. In any case, I ended up admiring a lot of Lestat's character. He's perfect, childish, and emotional. He's youthful, rebellious, and clever — there are honestly so many ways to categorise him. On top of that, everyone else is just as interesting. There are times in a character's "autobiography" where the main character completely overshadows everyone else. There are times when Lestat is second banana to other people in his life. Every encounter is unique or memorable in some way. It's so very well done.

"Beautiful" and "love" are both words that are overused within this tale, but I've gathered a new appreciation for them, you know? In the way that they're used, it's given me a new perspective past their base definitions. The conflict is raw – right on the tongue. Ghastly sometimes! I really appreciate this book because there's no limit to the sadness and pain that they all face. It's very interesting how they all deal with it.

There are conversations on good and evil, the meaning of immortality, the dealing with it. Oh, the dissections of humanity as man and vampire. Stuff, basically, that I lived off of as a young'un right in my hands between 550 pages. It's good stuff.

I really recommend this. I'm incredibly happy to have read this and to have someone to share this experience with. A friend of mine read The Vampire Armand. I plan to follow suit. I haven't read Queen of the Damned yet, but I watched the movie. Let me just say this:

• Grave misnomer/poorly titled
• 99% Lestat
• Who the eff is Jesse.
• Why, why this Jesse.
• Horribly written
• Nonsensical
• To this day, I still don't know what it's pretending to be about.

I don't know if I'll ever really do a review on it. I think I might just stitch my tweets together about it and make that a full length post instead. Bene. If you do watch it, read this and then watch the movie. I would love to know your response.