The Vampire Lestat

The Second Book in the Vampire Chronicles The Vampire Chronicles, #2

by Anne Rice

Hardcover, 481 pages

English language

Published Aug. 11, 1998 by Alfred A. Knopf.

ISBN:: 978-0-394-53443-5
OCLC Number:: 41173543

(98 reviews)

Returning to the hypnotic world she so brilliantly created in Interview with the Vampire, Anne Rice demonstrates once again her power to enthrall. With the same richness of drama, atmosphere and incident, she tells the fantastic story of the vampire Lestat, whom we first perceived as the seductive devil-vampire of Interview with the Vampire and whom we now follow through the ages as he searches for the origin and meaning of his own dark immortality. And who, more and more, engages our sympathy until he stands revealed as a questing romantic, a vampire-hero with his own strange and passionate courage and morality.

As the novel opens, Lestat, having risen from the earth after a fifty-five years' sleep, and infatuated with the modern world, presents himself in all his vampire brilliance as a rock star, a superstar, a seducer of millions. And, in this blaze of adulation, daring to break the vampire oath of silence, he determines to tell his story, to rouse the generations of the living dead from their slumbers and to penetrate the riddle of his own existence.

As he speaks we are plunged back into eighteenth-century France, into the castle where we meet the young Lestat: child of impoverished aristocrats, heroic hunter of wolves, at odds with his tyrannical father, running away to join a traveling troupe of actors. We see him in the licentious Paris of the day, first apprentice at a boulevard theater, then its most celebrated actor, idolized, adored by many and--night after night--watched by one . . . until, in a sleep filled with dreams of the wolves he killed as a boy, he is shocked awake by a dark figure and suddenly, horribly, eternally joined to the unholy brotherhood.

We follow Lestat as he searches for others like him--in churches and brothels, in gambling houses, huts and palaces--sometimes joined by the vampire-angel Gabrielle, who is bound to him both by blood and by passion; sometimes traveling with his adored Nicolas, the violinist whose music and beauty are equally transcendent. We follow Lestat as he travels from the snowcapped mountains of the Auvergne and the primeval forest of ancient Gaul to Sicily, Istanbul, Venice and Cairo, searching for his origins, sometimes finding clues to the birth of the vampire race, knowing always that the central truth eludes him.

But all the while, throughout his travels, through many lands and many times, Lestat has made enemies among his brethren--vampires who are in terror of his questions, who fear he will disturb the uneasy balance in which they exist with the mortal world, and who suspect in him a desire to rule. And when, in the caves below a craggy Greek island, in a sanctuary whose walls are covered with gold-flecked murals, the very first of the living dead awake, the truth at the heart of his quest is at last revealed. Ancient forces held immobile through the ages are irreversibly set in motion, and as the novel rushes to its stunning climax, Lestat's vampire foes converge in pursuit of him on the demonic freeways of the twentieth century.

39 editions

Plumereine reviewed Lestat le vampire by Anne Rice (Chroniques des vampires, 2)

(Critique exportée)

4 stars

(Critique exportée)

C'était vraiment chouette à lire. Il n'y avait pas un vocabulaire trop complexe ni même trop simple, rendant la lecture fluide !

L’intrigue du livre est vraiment sympa. Je ne me suis pas ennuyée pendant ma lecture. Le suspense est bien tenu et certains des retournements de situations sont intéressants, les autres sont prévisibles, mais sympas tout de même.

Le personnage qui m’a vraiment plu est Lestat, notre héro. Il est sensuel, apprécie la beauté des genres humains mais solitaire. Il est à noté qu’il est bi, ce qui est rafraichissant pour moi, car rares sont les livres que j’ai lu avec des personnages qui ne sont pas hétéro. L’un des points négatifs du roman est la subtile misogynie omniprésente chez tous les personnages, qu’ils soient homme ou femme et que j’attribue aux idées de l’autrice.

Je vous conseille donc de le lire si vous recherchez un passe-temps …

(Critique exportée)

C'était vraiment chouette à lire. Il n'y avait pas un vocabulaire trop complexe ni même trop simple, rendant la lecture fluide !

Je vous conseille donc de le lire si vous recherchez un passe-temps léger et sans prise de tête ! :D

Katherine Villyard reviewed The Vampire Lestat (Rice, Anne, Chronicles of the Vampires, 2nd Bk.) by Anne Rice (Vampire Chronicles (2))

Review of 'The Vampire Lestat (Rice, Anne, Chronicles of the Vampires, 2nd Bk.)' on 'Goodreads'

5 stars

So, I read this book originally in the 80s. It's aged like fine wine, which I'm sure Lestat would appreciate.

Anne Rice was a trailblazer. I won't say she's the first person who did a sympathetic vampire protagonist, because there was a 19th century serial called Varney the Vampire that did that. But Anne Rice vampires shaped all the vampires that came after, with their ethical struggles and their existential crises and their QUILTBAG rep--aside from the oft-mentioned bit where all Anne Rice vampires are bi poly, there's also Lestat's mother Gabrielle who, upon being turned, immediately says "F*** this" to living as a woman, dons men's clothing, and vanishes into the wilderness to be her own person at last.

This book is mostly setting up how vampires work and their history, and ends on a megacliffhanger. But..... yeah. Good stuff. If you like vampires and haven't read the first …

J'enjoie mes Codices reviewed Lestat le Vampire / Lestat the Vampire by Anne Rice (Pocket; Collection Terreur)

Lestat le Vampire

No rating

Malgré un début d’intrigue qui nous plonge dans les années 80, nous nous retrouvons vite dans le passé avec l’aide du point de vue de Lestat, mais aussi des autres personnages, que celui-ci rencontrera (ou à rencontré ?) le long de son existence.

C'était vraiment chouette à lire. Il n'y avait pas un vocabulaire trop complexe ni même trop simple, rendant la lecture fluide !