Yes, I know Lestat's songs is what woke Akasha up, but, in hindsight, I wish Anne Rice had found a different way to make him responsible without creating the rockstar gimmick.

Why?

Because it's a pair of jingling keys that never fails to distract everyone adapting this story. The rockstar Lestat thing is barely there, but it seems to attract the type of filmmaker that falls in love with the whole sex, drugs and rock and roll + vampires bullshit over the book's actual plot.

I may be... an angel with black wings

I may be...an evil with with infinite gradiations and  without guilt

I may be....the one who directed the play

I may be....the one no one has painted in 400 years

I may be...the coven leader waiting for an end

I may be...a room without walls

I may be...someone who no one is watching

I may be ...a dream or a gateway between life and death

But my one vindication...the conversion cannot happen. The brutal, medieval laws were not a cruel cage...they were a mathematical fact keeping our species alive!

Bookmarker available Nov 17th from outofprint.com

There is merch celebrating the 50th anniversary available for order already.

There's a lot of in in this article published today so I thought I'd share it.

I really loved AR's particular attraction to her first queer fans who came to a book signing dressed in 18th century clothing as Lestat and Louis. That audience is still a big part of her fandom. I wish she was still here to see what Sam, Jacob and Assad have made of her beloved Vampire Chronicles.

I know it's a long piece but I love seeing her old pho and also the list of events taking place in S.F.

Enjoy.

First off I want to say I thought it was really well written. I think this and TVA, as heartbreaking as it is, are my favorites so far.

I know when Anne first told the story of Armand and Marius, when Armand was telling it to Lestat at the castle that she probably didn't know she was going to take the story as far as she did. Hence why Marius never saved Armand. But the way she wrote TVA, Armand's complete devotion to Marius, and Marius seeming love and obsession for Armand, It really does not sit right with me that she basically had to come up with a reason why Marius never went to save Armand. (Because she already wrote it that way years earlier) But let me tell you my goodness, this book had me yelling. How quickly after Armand was kidnapped that he changed course to just forget him to go find Pandora. How extremely selfish was he to groom Armand and then let him go like that. I so wish that it could have been a different story that he would have saved Armand. It would have been so much more satisfying. It's eating at me.

I attempted to answer this question for myself and cannot.

That time of year again. My wife and I recently finished season 2 of the show so I felt the urge to come back to the book and do another read.

actually I reading The Vampire Armand

Via Christopher Rice’s Facebook and Rare Books LA on Instagram: Los Angeles City Councilmember Ysabel Jurado introduced the resolution to declare October 4th, Anne’s birthday, as Anne Rice Day in LA, a beautiful tribute to her for what would have been her 85th birthday.

In honor of Anne’s birthday and Anne Rice Day, I’m going to post one of my favorite quotes from the books in the comments. What are yours?

I was just re-reading QotD and i found this:
“You told God you would do anything if only he would make you good. […] You said you would suffer martyrdom; torments unspeakable; it did not matter; if only you were to be someone who was good”

Lestat has always been good. He always had such a kind soul. Yes, he might be impulsive and likes to challenge the rules just for the fun of it, but he never does it out of evilness.

He’s not perfect, but he is kind and forgiving to everyone he loves.

He likes to call himself “monster”, but I don’t think he’s as bad as he thinks he is. Yes, he’s not a saint but even humans aren’t perfect.
Most of the time, his heart was in the right place. And the times he impulsively hurt people, it was because of his fears and traumas and not thinking it through. He’s impulsive, not evil.

He’s more forgiving than most people. He forgave Claudia and Louis for trying to kill him, he didn’t hold grudge on Armand for dropping him out of Magnus’s tower and breaking his every bone, he took care of his father and brothers despite them abusing him all his life. He took care financially of everyone: he gave Nicki an apartment and the violin, he gave Armand Magnus’s place, he gave the Theatre des Vampires to the coven, he showered with gifts Gabrielle and Claudia. He’s always been generous.
Even Akasha knows not to hurt the ones he loves, else he would not forgive her.

P.S. I am not talking about the blood drinking part, as that is just a consequence of being a vampire and he doesn’t do it for fun. He struggles with having to kill people in order to survive and tries to pick evildoers. Cannot blame him for that.

Years ago now when I first read through the series up to Armand's book, I skipped TVL. I recall I did this because I felt Interview had filled me with an entirely justified antipathy to the character. I also didn't care for how everyone online told me Anne Rice fell in love with him and said Louis was wrong about everything. An exaggeration I know now, at least the second part of that, but it just made me uninterested in the series unless it was QOTD with its multiple viewpoints or Armand's book.

But getting back to the point of this thread, this quote really stayed with me after my re-read of IWTV a couple years ago now. I think it is the strongest condemnation Louis makes of Lestat all book, although there are no shortage of passages where he expresses his absolute disdain for Lestat. He explicitly hated him since his first night as a vampire.

And that brings me to two points:

1. The VC fandom has not changed in one way - Book Louis is still denounced as "whiny." Looking at threads from recent months or years, I see it so often. I saw it 15 or something years ago when I first read the book and watched the movie. "Lestat is so much better!" That was the explanation for why the subsequent books were about him. I wonder about this. I'll offer two theories as to why I think so many prefer Lestat to Louis:

a) He's a man of action. Louis is explicitly passive. It's who he is in both the narrative and just his general personality. He likes to sit and think and such characters often go down very poorly with some readers, even in some of the most acclaimed books of the 20th Century. Lestat is flamboyance and energy personified.

b) If we take Louis and Lestat as opposite ends on a spectrum of how to deal with being a vampire, I think most people imagine they would be Lestat. They would be a rockstar who kills and doesn't afraid of anything. They don't want to imagine themselves as Louis, sitting alone and pondering unhappily the unanswerable mysteries of the universe. I guess a. and b. are kinda related.

And now my second point, something that I don't even pretend to understand.

1. The idea that Interview is the testimonial of "a spurned lover." I've seen this explanation so often, that the negativity in the book is explicable in terms of an ex and that the romance between Louis and Lestat is overflowing in the pages.

I...don't know what book these people are reading. It's not the one I'm on my third go around with. As I said, this book left me with such a rapacious hatred for Lestat that I didn't even want to touch his book for years. That was silly and juvenile and I've read it now and I'm glad for it. But I think it still represents the intended feeling of the novel. You're not supposed to come away liking Lestat. He is very much the villain of the novel. He has moments of complexity and sympathy but he's still the villain. Louis' feelings of anger, hatred, and contempt are not ambiguous. I realize we live in an age of fanfics and anime where "it's not like I like you or anything..." is popular, but when a character says "I hate you" and then they say it again, and then 500 more times after that, it's probably just plain old hatred, not love.

I am doing a follow up to the survey I did of fans of The Vampire Chronicles in summer 2025! You can see the survey results from last time (under my old account before I got locked out of it) here! I got more than 500 responses last time, and hopefully people enjoyed seeing the results! The goal was to capture a snapshot of the fan base and a few of our opinions, this follow-up captures a few opinions I didn't ask about the first time.

You are welcome to take the new survey whether or not you took the previous one. The only two requirements to take it are that you consider yourself a fan of the book series The Vampire Chronicles by Anne Rice, and you have read at least one book in the series in its entirety. Otherwise I don't care if you just finished your first book in the series yesterday or are on your tenth reread, I'd love if you took it!

The survey will close on October 18th, and if the results aren't out less than a week after that they will be out in early November, because... Halloween.

Compare with Simon Vance version.

This has always been one of my favorite passages from these books. I confess, so far, I think I preferred Simon Vance as I felt his voice suited Louis' introspective, melancholy nature. However, It did not fit at all with the post-IWTV books with Lestat as the POV character, so I'm very happy to have those new audiobooks. I'll even go through TVL again to try it out with the new VAs. Same with QOTD - although I only listened to that so long ago that it was the Frank Muller version.

Anyway, figured others might be interested in this since I know Vance's performance is a bit divisive.

Skeleton and quote unrelated. It was flooded in three feet of water, amazingly scenic but gets no attention from fans or artists.

Picked up this beauty today. Currently reading The Vampire Lestat and decided I’d buy the chronicles.

Not bad for $3.

Did Anne state that Lestat retained his mind gift abilities while occupying a human body?

Hi all!

I'm in my 30s and read many of Anne Rice's books when I was in high school.

I've re-read some of the Chronicles in the years since, but never more than one at a time. Without veering off into my life story, I recently decided to quit cannabis after years of abuse (that having followed a decade of near-constant travel accompanied by obvious alcoholism). I've quit this, quit that, relapsed, failed, and sometimes succeeded--but what I've found, time and time again, is that spending more time with books helps me feel all the more "human" (lol).

So, to that end, I just wrapped up my latest review of what I see as the series' core: Interview with the Vampire, The Vampire Lestat, and, as of 15 minutes ago, Queen of the Damned. I'm having a great time with the books but am not entirely sure where to turn next. For context, I've already read most of the series (up to maybe Blood Canticle?), but that was so long ago that I don't have much recall for which I liked and which I didn't.

I'm planning to buy a copy of The Tale of the Body Thief, because I remember I enjoyed that one; I liked Memnoch, too, but suspect my diminished attention span needs something a little more action-packed. So, on that note, what would y'all recommend? I'm thinking "Blood & Gold," and I've seen a lot of others recommend "Blackwood Farm" (which I think I may have read in the very distant past, but can't remember a single thing about). I'm pretty clueless when it comes to Pandora, Vittorio, and Blood Canticle. I may have read Armand at some point, too, but it's another blank spot.

I know there are only so many books, and I know that taste is entirely subjective--I guess I'm just looking for input from others!

Currently on a journey to collecting and owning books from Anne’s Vampire universe—they’ve been on my list for quite some time.

I can now, (after a week actually) proudly say the first book to be ticked off my list and added to my library is ‘The Vampire Armand’!! 🫀
(just look at that beloved cover..)

Already on my second read, and all i can say is.. Armand has a special, stitched and bandaged little place in my heart.

Left to Collect:
IWTV* *
The Vampire Lestat* *
Queen of the Damned