Lestat: What? Louis was for sure lying about me! He's such an unreliable narrator Lestat's account: yeah I'm actually a really good person who only drinks from bad people and am so charismatic I break up cults just by showing them they're stupid :D
@@Carewolf True. "The Vampire Lestat" isn't really a retcon of "Interview," because future books point out that Lestat is just as unreliable a narrator as Louis, and he even admits it. It's basically the same thing that goes on in real life -- two people have their own version of events, and truth is somewhere in between.
I agree. Many of the male vampires who get a lot of attention tend to be almost cartoonish and a bit one note. In contrast Gabrielle seems a lot more interesting. I'd like to know wth she's been up to.
I would love it if there was a series that just kept doing this perpetually. Each sequel taking a character from the previous biography and going "well that's not how it happened." Over time you gradually refine the true events down and add more to the timeline with each new character telling parts of the story none of the previous narrators were there for. It sounds both obnoxious and unironically kind of interesting. So basically perfect for me.
Worked for the New Testament, but it's not working at all in the TV show "What I said before was bullshit, because memory is completely flexible, depending on what you need your story to do!"
"There's someone else in bed with him." I'd say I've read that fan fiction before, but Anne Rice had them all purged from the internet before I got into The Vampire Chronicles.
Lestat is actually known as “the brat prince” in the books. As well, he’s actually bisexual (in human terms), but prefers men over women. His reasoning first being that they were “boring” then later because they were “scary”.
Gay as a human, bi as vampire, because vampires dont really have sexuality (so in practice are bi, but it's somewhat asexual as well, but feeding on blood is better than sex, so...). He practically has a love affair with his turned mother too, since family vis genetics means nothing to vampires either - but again, love and "sex" (feeding) are not really sexual in human terms.
I don't know why but I find the idea of Lestat not taking the threats from other vampires seriously because "what kind of vampire leaves upset messages on an answering machine?" hilarious
I love Lestat so much, he is a very interesting and charismatic character that you can’t help but like him. I love that he wakes up in the 20th Century and decides “Fuck it, I want to become a rock star and make songs about vampire society as well as make my own memoirs to set the record straight.” I just love how the guy just gives zero fucks which makes so much more interesting.
I totally agree with you. I love Lestat's ability to explore boundaries. Many find him selfish, but to me he is just a character who loves the impossible, who wants to live life.
I like the idea of vampires staying at the level of maturity they had when bitten. But I think it’s best done in Tuck Everlasting where experience brings maturity, the more you experience and act like an adult, the more mature you become. So an immortal who never does anything but the things they did in their you, they stay at that maturity. But if they work and experience more, they become more mature. (But could you imagine perpetual puberty?! Oh gods no!)
I think it's just the way Lestat himself sees the world in the beginning, from what I remember he starts maturing a LOT in later books (the fans were not pleased)
I mean you probably would be in perpetual puberty since your hormones stay all out of whack and that is what makes you so shit as a teenager. That sounds horryfing actually
They still develop mentally that's why child vampires are such a big taboo. Lestat just has an old world French aristocrat attitude. He does still grow a bit mentally.. when something otherworldly happens...
I'll be honest, I found Louis's tragic story to be more compelling than Lestat yeeting his way through undeath. But I never really considered the two stories inherently better or worse than the other. I would have loved the Vampire Chronicles to go farther with the idea of following the same chain of events told from the perspective of several different unreliable narrators over the years. And letting the reader try to put together what was real and what was the narrator exaggerating, playing down, misreading or lying about what they experienced.
I agree I have no problem understanding or believing that two people can see the same situation very, very differently. And hearing the way Louie suffered through his early immortal life, might actually be more valuable than Lestat's side of the story, if only so that we could see what Lestat looks like from the outside since we do the most of our viewing of him through his own eyes
One of the things that will never leave me when it comes to Vampire Lestat was the scene of him exploring the tower after magnus kills himself only to find a room full of the corpses of men with Lestats features. It's horrifyingly disturbing in its implications and Lestat has to deal with that alone. F- man
Man I fucking hate Tale of the body thief, menstruation blood is not just blood so thinking of a vampire drinking it s just bleh. Add to the fact Lestat rapes a woman in it. Her later books after Queen are so disjointed and range from very bad to hey maybe this one isn't so bad. Like I mean I enjoyed the Armand book and Prince Lestat had it;'s moment. But damn Rice.
@@randombrokeperson Her books have always walked the border between self therapy (working out the loss of her daughter) and her erotic fantasies - like her successors like Twilight. While they edge from quality work to crap, its not a lie. East of Eden was straight up porn. So was her Sleeping Beauty trilogy. To me shes kinda like the hentai manga writers that go legit eventually....but never quite forget their roots
One of the things I really liked about the first two books was their inception style nesting dolls of unreliable narrators. Both books were, in-universe, believed to be fiction claiming to be fact written by two different vampires each one telling the story from their perspective. So I go with the interpretation that BOTH books are essentially auto-fan-fiction written by Louis and Lestat.
Is fun because I could swear that somewhere Armand was kind of pissed at them for making him look bad. Even funnier because in the latest two books he has turned into a little ball of hate xD
@@naochan133 A subtle character point through the whole series is that the vampires have been in hiding forever, but Louis' book revelaed them, and made them look bad. And now they're vampire vanity can't take it so every vampire starts figuring out how to reveal themselves in a way that makes them look awesome because secretly they have ALL wanted to go public and live large.
One of the things I liked about the book is how Lestat sees the modern world (at least in the west). From his perspective it's way more equal and fair than it was in the past with average people having a lot more rights and privileges than ever before. It's something I appreciated even back in the 90's when I read the book because literature about the past focuses almost entirely about the well to do and/or nobility. It's not saying the modern world is perfect, but from Lestat's perspective way better than in his day.
One thing the Corona virus is showing is how wealthy, peaceful and complacent our society is. The current fashion from leftists/SJWs and their ilk of hating on the West and European culture is so stupid that it's hard to fathom. It's thanks to Europe and the US that we live in a time of abundance that would be unimaginable in the past, have democracy and a level of individual freedom that would also be unimaginable in the past, even by nobility standards. So peaceful that people are freaking out in dealing with an epidemic, something that was in fact commonplace in the past. The Black Plague alone decimated more than 70% of Europe's population in the course of some 100 years.
Alexandre Martins I think that while the people reacting badly to the pandemic has been on the news, the VAAAAST majority of people are adjusting their behavior to keep themselves safe and cooperating to make sure people get enough food and supplies necessary for everyday life. And that’s because we have incredibly good infrastructure compared to past decades and also instant communication on the Internet to coordinate activities.
“Carpe Jugulum," read Agnes aloud. "That's... well, Carpe Diem is 'Sieze the Day,' so this means-" "Go for the throat” ― Terry Pratchett, Carpe Jugulum
Ah, Anne Rice, one of the few authors that's listed on Fanfiction as someone that does not allow fanfiction. She apparently went after a few fans hard when they did some fanfiction/art and really traumatised a few people.
So much so they hid their fanfics away and repeatedly ducked and dodged her wrath. I was too young to be on the internet at that time, but I hear it was one hell of a panicked ride.
I’ve read the reports of how pissed she’s gotten if she finds fans wrote any form of fan-fiction. If it gets put online, she’s quickly gone to great lengths to have such things taken done; think even lawsuits have mentioned at least once
Yeah, you basically had to sign a confidentiality agreement to access the few sites that had fic in those days. No fandom means no relevance these days, though, and a lot of the old guard are slowly realizing that.
"The Queen of the Damned" film was so bad, I thought it would kill vampire movies. Then "Twilight" came out, and I realized it had only killed good vampire movies.
not the best story, but also not the worst. funny enough the twilight movies are one of the best book adaptions i ever saw. everything is in it, nothing weird added. i think they deserve prize for that at least.
I used to convince myself that the so-called "lies" of Interview with the vampire were actually true and it's Lestat's ego that makes him deny it. Lestat admits hew as in that he was in that house and in that condition, just denies that Louis saw him that way. Then how did Louis know what house he was in and the condition he was in? Armand hadn't told him. The only logical explanation is Lestat denies it for his own ego's sake.
I think you can write a single book where the main character is full of self loathing. I'm not sure you can do a series that way. It's draining for a reader to deal with such a character over the the long haul, so movie Louis to a supporting role is probably for the best. From what I remember, Louis kind of develops a "murder is murder" attitude and finds the notion of only killing criminals to be hypocritical, although apparently that's what most of the others do (at least those on the "good" side).
It’s explained in books that if you drink innocent blood you get glimpses and visions and emotions of people you feed on and it accumulates to the point that you feel this eternal vampire “ptsd” type guilt and eventually want to go into sunlight, so they go after most deprived even then trough ages it affects them.
I remember when reading The Vampire Lestat, I kept waiting for the big reveal that Lestat had heavily fictionalized his history, that Interview was the "real" Lestat. I just couldn't see it going in any other direction, not with how absurdly "amazing" Lestat was portrayed. Except that reveal never happened. And he only became more "amazing", eventually turning into a full on vampire Superman. I expected him to reverse time by flying around the world, firing heat rays from his eyes, and to develop a weakness to Kryptonite. Instead, his weakness was just bad writing.
exactly, I just don't understand how people can prefer TVL over IwtV. Maybe they were kids when they read it and it's pure nostalgia? Because the writing quality... yeah you described it well. Aside from that what I hate about the book is the amount of gaslighting and just no. I can't get through sh*t like that. It's horrible to live through it but to have it thrown at me in fiction - I refuse to put myself through it. That is also why I never finished reading the book. Anne took the easiest and the sloppiest way to reboot her vampire universe - using the 'well, the victim was lying' approach. And we should love a sh*t character like that? nah
@@imaginefaraway I liked both when I read them as a teenager, but they do barely seem to belong in the same series. I think Anne Rice's writing always lurched between moody and introspective personal horror.....and pulpy adventure with a horror sheen between novels, (as well as some novels like the Mayfair Witches that kind of land in the middle). And you can see the fracture most clearly between the first two books of the Vampire Chronicles. TVL has a relentless energy to it that I really liked--I love the secret history of vampires that unfolds, and Gabrielle's turning blew my mind. And yes, Lestat in Interview is an eerily perfect recreation of an abusive husband. Alternates between mean and vicious abuse and belittling, extravagant gestures of affection and pretending nothing ever happened. When his "spouse" looks likely to leave, he suggests having a "child" to fix the relationship, only to treat the "child" equally shabbily. At at the end of the novel, promises he can change, then immediately lapses into the same old bad habits.
i was about 13 when, freshly liberated from a cult like fundamentalist christian upbringing by my parents divorce, i stumbled across this book. it would not be an exaggeration to say it changed my life. it introduced me to so many different possibilities of thought.
Oh, man, when I was in college, I was *always* loaning out my vampire (and other supernatural) books to classmates whose parents would have blown their tops if they knew what their (adult) kids were reading. I also loaned out Andrew Vachss, other such 'hard-core' genre, and science fiction, for some wild reason. Even today, I still don't get why some people try to keep their kids from reading certain things. IMHO, you can tell your kids why you think they should not read something. But if they really want to read it, they'll get it from a friend. Especially if they're in college, and out from under their parents'eyes.
@@zetaforever4953 I was in college in the early 90s, so no internet then. (Y'all young folks don't know how good y'all have it. To do research, we had to go to the library, and look it up in a book! OTOH, there is a ton of crap web sites out there..... we certainly didn't have to wade through as much junk.) I read some of the blogs like "No Longer Quivering" or "Love, Joy, Feminism", "Without a Crystal Ball".... not sure if "Recovering Grace" has really been updated. But there's a new tactic on some of these controlling parents- not having internet, or having the computer in a 'common' room where they can keep an eye on what their kids are doing. (Now I understand keeping tabs on whom your kids are talking to on the internet. That 'cute' 14 year old your kid is communicating with on the internet might be really 40.) I was at "No Greater Joy" and Michael Pearl's daughter (Shoshanna, I think) was writing about keeping the kidlets off the internet, so that one can keep them 'pure' and untainted by those liberals, heathens, atheists, feminists (oh my) out there. I feel sorry for some kids. Now I'm wondering how much Jill Rodrigues' kids, or Steven Anderson's kids are allowed to get on the internet. (With Anderson, the oldest two have full time jobs, so they might be able to get contraband from their co-workers.)
@@bugeyedmonster2 well you can only do that until the kid has a personal smartphone. And nowadays, most kids have a smartphone by the time they're in highschool. I don't think it's any great loss to be deprived of the weirdness of the Internet until you're 14-15. I discovered BDSM at 13-14 and it vaguely freaked me out, lol. Plus, if the kid is resourceful enough, they'll get what they want from peers who have greater internet freedom. Trying to control them beyond the age of 16 is a lost cause these days, in my opinion. I had free reign of my family's library (and internet, when it came along), so I'd read all kinds of weird sex stuff I didn't understand as a kid. Never seemed to bother my parents. I just ignored the stuff I didn't understand/wasn't interested in and moved on. I don't know why people think kids are such snowflakes who'll be scarred for life by something they read or watch. At worst, I'd be mildly weirded out for a couple of days and then forget about it. And it was the same for most kids I grew up with. P.S. who's Steven Anderson. Or Jill Rodriguez, for that matter?
@@zetaforever4953 My parents never tried to control my reading either. I'll admit that I'm mostly on ex-fundamentalists Christian web sites (like the ones I mentioned.) And a lot of the fundie Xtian parents trying to control their kids is that they want the kids to 'stay in the faith' and they think that if their kids read too much stuff from liberals, atheists, and feminists (oh my) their kids will be 'corrupted' and leave the faith. And those left in the fundamentalism seem to be doubling down. They don't allow their kids to have cell phones. There are even some of the 'leaders' of this movement who think that the newer generations shouldn't even be allowed to go to college or trade school. (They might meet liberals, atheists, and feminists there!) It would be funny, if it weren't so creepy. (Now I'm reminded of the Turpins. Those kids weren't even allowed out. And several were way past the age of 18._ (I swear, I look at Jill Rodrigues' kids, and I want to kidnap them, take them out to eat, buy them groceries, and burner phones.) It's like reading Eleanor Skelton's blog about The Girl Who Once Lived in a Box. Ooo, this web page from Cult Education explains it a bit more.... culteducation.com/group/34251-the-daughters-great-escape.html
I was waiting for this for so long! I do have to admit that Lestat does feel like a more honest narrator than Louis maybe not in the OP way he portrays himself but in the little details he sprinkles throughout the story which make him sort of a self-aware brat. Example: When he mentions that he KNOWS Magnus chose him because he is so cool and special, and then almost immediately mentioning he was so hungry he went to eat a pile of corpses in Magnus' dungeon and then saw a pile of failed vampire experiments that literally all look like him, implying he was not chosen or special, just that Magnus had a type. Or when he switches narrator from himself to Marius but has to make it VERY clear to the reader that when Marius mentions he is blond and cool and beautiful it's not Lestat himself trying to make himself look better, oh no, it's 100% what Marius thought at the time, fur reals! But then Marius never actually mentions that Lestat is particularly any more beautiful than any other vampire.
exactly. by the details of the book and how he sometimes debases himself, I agree that he was a writer more loyal to the facts (not to the truth, because that doesn't really exist, they are just points of view). And in the books narrated by Marius and Armand, they never deny what Lestat wrote, on the contrary, Armand practically confirms everything.
The first three books in the Vampire Chronicles are amongst my very favorite books of all time... everything that comes after is getting mostly ignored in this household. Well, I did read the newest books and decided to treat them as entertaining crack fic, but those first three are my canon.
Indeed, I don't remember which book it was, but either the 4th or 5th maybe was a total strike out for me. I was actually revolted at how Rice was treating her own characters, and decided to both drop the books and Rice as an author forever.
@@axelord4ever She lost me at Memnoch The Devil, I still hung on through Tale of the Body Thief the 4th book, which I consider the last good Vampire Chronicle. She should have stopped while she was ahead. Blending them with the Mayfair Witches was laughable.
Honestly, it does still seem quite a bit of a retcon from Interview, where she realized how popular Lestat became and/or she fell more in love with creation as time went on. Not necessarily a bad thing, but I do get a bit irked when authors do this because they decide they love certain characters. I can see it both ways, whether Louis was just that unreliable of a narrator because he resented Lestat and was dealing with his own guilt or Rice just loves Lestat that much and it was a deliberate retcon. I think it's possible to still enjoy both, though. I did read Interview back in high school, but unfortunately, due to my own personal opinion of Rice, I'm not quite sure I'd actually read the other books, so thank you for taking care of the work for the first three for me, Dom!
I know no-one asked for a mini fandom history lesson, but I've seen several discussions of Anne's history with fan-works down in the comments and I think it'll help newer fans understand Anne's weird mindset/actions, and the sheer terror they induced, when put into the context of the period. Her reactions were more terrifying then than they seem now for the simple fact that her threats were genuine and existed in a period of total paranoia about fandom life. At the time, read up to the late 90's, Fic writers lived in fear of Anne's team of bulldog lawyers with their cease and desist letters and threats of suing. Especially because she DID actually sue several people, including fans who had created their own fan sites dedicated to her books (I still flinch and startle when I come across a DeviantArt or Tumbler page dedicated to the Vampire Chronicles). Mind you, Anne wasn't the only author like this at the time, just the most well known for it. This was during the period where the Rule # 1 dominated fandom (You didn't talk about fandom. Period.). Any sort of fan-based creative endeavor dedicated to her books was ripped down or tucked into a dark seedy corner of the interwebs on password protected private sites, deeply buried in AngelFire and Geocities' servers where their creaters prayed she'd never find them. Fic writers/artists had less legal safety nets than we do now and our rights to write what we pleased came and went with the original creators' whims. An author could be fine with fanfiction one day, then turn around after finding a fic they didn't like and demand ALL fan-based works cease immediately. The fandom culture that members exist in now didn't exist then. You can thank creators/authors like Joss Whedon and JK Rowling who actively encouraged and even cultivated fan-based creative arts, for the existence fandom culture. If you've ever read a fic and seen a *Disclaimer* at the start of the story, these are a hold over from that period. It was our paltry attempt to defend ourselves and our works by declaring that we weren't claiming the original work as our own, but simply paying homage to the original's brilliance.... So PLEASE don't sue us! They didn't actually offer any legal defense, but it was always considered a necessary adage just in case. These days you'll usually only find disclaimers attached to older stories, fics written by older writers who add them by habit, or younger writers who add them because the older writers did. These days Anne seems to have finally learned that avoiding fandom only hurts you as an author in today's fandom culture as she stated in 2012 that she was going to "live and let live" when it comes to fan fiction, acknowledging that some people use fanfiction as a spring board for improving their own writing and doesn't hamper the original author. I'm still paranoid that she may change her mind again, all the same.
My favorite book of the entire Vampire Chronicles series! As tragic and chaotic as his "life" is, Lestat has a way of finding joy in his existence. Even Nikolas says that he has a light about him, where in Nickolas there is only dark. Of course events in later books really, really put that to the test, but even when Lestat gets a chance to be human again, he chooses his vampire life. I also prefer how his relationship with Louis is depicted in this book compared to Interview. Lestat cared about him far more than Louis ever realized. It still pisses me off that Louis was erased completely for the QOTD movie.
Yeah, I had read The Tale of The Body and I had enjoyed that book. 😂 I don't blame him for disliked to being human and let his only human friend,but he winded up turning his friend into a vampire anyway.
I'd be down with that. As long as it was treated seriously and was well cast. "The Vampire Lestat" movie shows you what can happen to this material when it's been cast by someone in a fever dream and the filmmakers treat it as if they are making "Blade 4."
I heard Hulu was working on it,but they decided to dropped it because Warner Bros. owns the two films and Hulu is owned by Disney. Anne Rice is looking for a streaming service that could do it the tv adaptation like Netflix or Amazon. I did wrote a petition for Amazon picking up the tv adaption of it. www.change.org/p/amazon-and-anne-rice-please-let-amazon-prime-pick-vampire-chronicle?. I did tweeted Netflix to pick the series up. I really hope The Vampire Chronicles will get pick up by Netflix or Amazon Prime in the future. 😳 Because those books makes you're watching a tv show.
Interesting origin for Akasha. I like it a lot more than the whole "deal with the devil" trope that's been done to death by Dracula. Corruption via ghost or demon is a lot more interesting IMO
Sometimes biblical effects can make story quite intricate, it is, after all, the greates work of fiction of all times. The whole deal with a devil can be a very flat plot point if left unexplored, for sure, but other kind of biblical elements can offer quite incredible platforms for stories. For example White wolfs world of darkness has vampiric lore that stems from story of Cain and Abel, ultimately creating a religion system for vampires, Cain being their god figure, the first vampire, whose curse of blood they belive to have inherited. Cain is also the one some beleve will return in Gehenna (end of time) to judge all decentants of Antedeluvians (3rd generation vampires). True to religion, in cannon, modern day (count in anything from medieval times to this day) vampires can't agree on detales of Book of Nod (basicly their obscure bible), exsistance of Cain or Gehenna, some actively denying any actual truth to the stories. This was needlesly long comment about one fragment of my favourite vampiric lore, I'm sorry.
@@Kardinaalilintu look, not trying to be rude, but referring to a major modern religion as "the greatest work of fiction of all time" is more then a little disrespectful to those who practice it. Plus, come on, Megamind the movie is right there
Ah yes the 80’s, a time in hard rock where it was still unusual for band members to pretend to be vampires. Now we just have Powerwolf and nobody bats an eye about it. The past truly was a simpler, but not necessarily better, time.
Bless you. This totally made my night. If I ever get too stressed about current world events, I can just think to myself, "If Lestat can survive the 1800s...I'll make it through 2020"
Good evening everyone! The things that I loved the most in the novel were when, on her death bed, Lestat's mother told him "You are not alive anymore" and when she gave him her consent to be turned into a vampire 🧛♀️🧛♀️🧛♀️
I like how, this thing has several hundred upvotes thus far and not a single dislike. I know that's gonna change eventually, but still, nice to see for a change, and certainly this is a reviewer who deserves that >w>
I've never actually read it, granted, but I don't see how a woman wearing trousers is automatically a gender identity thing. I wouldn't want to go live my new free life in the wilderness wearing four layers of skirts and a whalebone corset! It might cramp your vampiric style somewhat. I mean, yeah, she's wearing "men's trousers", but it's not as if there was such a thing as women's trousers, in the time period. And women quite like trousers. We're not hard wired with a love of skirts. Seems like a rare case of a lady vampire making a sensible wardrobe choice, to me. Bella Swan, take notes. Hunting deer in an evening gown is ludicrous behaviour. I don't care HOW hungry you are, or how resistant to chafing your shiny diamond skin is. That silk dress isn't, and if you keep flinging yourself at tree trunks and scrambling up cliff faces in it, you'll be flashing the whole of Forks before too long
Obligatory not a twilight fan introduction to the comment over, in the book she does tear the dress to smithereens and Edward puts his own shirt on her so that her tiddies won't be in everyone's faces when they head back home😅
Gabrielle actually also tries to cut her hair short, but finds it regrows every day during her vampire sleep - which inspires her to experiment with hairstyles a lot.
@Lovely_Theaceae Women choosing to wear practical clothes - instead of restrictive corsets and a hundred layers of delicate expensive fabrics you would have lived in fear of tearing or staining because of the sheer cost / effort of repairing them - isn't a sign they don't want to be women anymore, it's just common sense. Google the Rational Dress Movement! And dress sense in the eighteenth century flies in the face of what we consider to be genderered norms today anyway. 18th century men wore their hair long and curly, little boys wore petticoats, and pink was considered a perfectly masculine color. As soon as women had an "excuse" to wear practical clothing like trousers - with the advent of the bicycle, for instance, or the explosion in the amount of women working farm and factory jobs in World War Two - they did so. Women want to be comfortable. They were just held back from being so before then by a patriarchal society that insisted their primary function was as baby making ornaments. Freed from this expectations, it's not surprising a vampire would reject traditional female dress where she could. The only surprising thing is that more fictional vamps don't take the same approach! But then, female vampires are mostly written for an audience that expects them to be immortally beautiful goddesses or sexy femme fatales. It's the conventions of the genre.
@Lovely_Theaceae At that time, women working in certain jobs were already wearing trousers, had been for a while. Yes, in general women wore skirts and men wore trousers, but it was no absolute and the punishment for breaking those rules was social (aka being considered weird and avoided by a certain number of people on one's own social tier, unless one was a worker), not legal.
@Lovely_Theaceae Yeah, exactly. Skirts can be restrictive anyway, but climb high enough up the social ladder and you might find your clothing became so cumbersome you couldn''t even walk through doors head on, or sit down properly. Even if you didn't have to deal with all that, there were still the day to day annoyances of petticoats trailing in the mud, shawls slipping off your shoulders, etc. Shirt, trousers and jacket, is just an easier mode of dress. You can walk, climb, ride do pretty much anything you like in it. The same can't be said for most of women's day-to-day clothing, up until the 20th century and even today. Look at the functionality of little girl's clothing compared to little boy's, or compare the unnecessarily skimpy shorts and cleavage-exposing v-necks in women's versions of sport kits. Or compare any uniform that demands women wear skirts and high heels to work, while men get to go about their day in trousers and flat shoes. And I absolutely second your other reply about the reasons women submitted to the social pressure to wear this less practical clothing, and the consequences if they did not. I don't know who all these trouser wearing women were that other commenter was talking about. The cast majority of working class women from the 16th to 20th centuries wore stays or corsets, and dresses that were just of a material less fine than their mistresses. Wools and linens instead of cottons and silks. The idea that you could causally walk down the street and see a woman in trousers is not accurate. I'm not saying no woman ever wore trousers, but it didn't become a social norm until about the 1930's.
I didn't really like Interview With the Vampire, I thought it was too depressing and dark, but I gave The Vampire Lestat a chance and I LOVED IT. It's one if my favorite books. Lestat's and Louis' reunion made me cry, ngl
When I was in the peak of my meth addiction my car radio would only work with tapes and the only tapes I had was the vampire Lestat I used be able to quote the whole novel word for word
This blew my mind when I was 14. I'd just watched IWTV, loved it, and then my sister gave me a copy of this book. The Vampire Chronicles became my first online fandom in '98. You're right. You never really forget your first love.
By the way, talking about Queen Akasha: am I the only one that finds her suspiciously similar to Princess Akivasha from "The Hour of the Dragon"? I mean, she comes from the ancient kingdom of Stygia, that following Hyborian Age canon, is the Egypt before there was an Egypt, and have very similar names. Did Anne Rice took inspiration from Robert E. Howard, or are both characters inspired in a previous vampiric myth I'm unfamiliar with?
@@carsonsmith7314 Lilith isnt mentioned in the bible as person (but just as 'nightactive animals' in a sentence), she appears in an early version (apocrypha) and is there inspired from the actual babylonian/sumerian etc goddess Lilitu/Inannu/Ishtar, mostly a goddess of war and/or the underworld.
Howard's world describes the one out of the myths of Lovecraft, he was a friend and huge fan. Many people connected their stories to one or both of them since decades, so its not surprising.
Akasha is a Sanskrit word that essentially means ether. Very easy to make into a feminine sounding name and it has metaphysical ties. Egypt is choice for placing a fictional civilization that is supposed to be one of the earliest, if not the earliest civilizations. There is a lot known about ancient Egypt and there were organized civilizations in those lands for almost 3,000 years before it even became ancient Egypt.
You should do the tv show adaptation now, since the book is completely different from how they did the movie version, 30 years ago. And I can finally say, the show did it better as an adaptation and making it close to how the book is dealt with. Since it is a two part show, it is close to how the book is written.
Yeah I was about to comment as such. I enjoyed that Deep Dive a lot, even though I'm not a vampire fan personally. That movie was fun. I remember seeing it in the theaters when it came out. Even then I was like "ok this is fairly over the top", but I'd come to expect that from 90-2000's vampire stuff. All the sex and leather cranked up to 11. But it was still pretty fun.
There's no nu-metal in the QOTD movie, only angsty rock and alt and hard rock. The soundtrack was the only good thing to come out of that movie and it sounds like where the budget mostly went.
This was my favorite of the Vampire Chronicles. I read The Vampire Lestat to pieces. Yes, the series does go off the rails a bit but it is all such a fun read that you don't care.
Can't wait for the rest. That movie was a defining moment of my adolescence. The sexy, SEXY vampires, the bathtub scene and that soundtrack is perfection!
A: I think I want to read this book now (I was rather put off Rice by "the witching hour", but this sounds insane in a good way) B: This reminded me of the confusing complaints I ran across regarding (blink-and-you'll-miss-it) homoeroticism in the recent Netflix 'Dracula'. I remember thinking: "Uh, guys? Are you not aware this has been a thing with vampires basically forever?" Sure, a lot of people haven't read 'Carmilla' or this book, but the "Interview with the vampire" movie came out ages ago and is still pretty well known.
Knowing a bit of vampire fiction (world of darkness in particular) the fact that Lestat's sire was a VERY powerful vampire could explain quite a bit of why he seems so incredibly powerful as well. Power of the blood and such.
That piano music reminded me of the Christmas carol, "what child is this?" I sang that carol for four years in school so I'm constantly singing to myself, "the babe, the son of Marry" all throughout the review. Weird how stuff like that comes back around, isn't it?
Fun fact, that song a) didn't start life as a Christmas Carol and b) has a shit ton of variations and origin stories running about. I'm actually kind of annoyed that I grew up knowing it only as a Christmas Carol because whenever I hear it outside of that context, I have the same problem - the Christmas lyrics just auto-start in my brain and I find it very jarring.
I'm going to be honest I also didn't like that Lestat was turned into merciful character, it bugged me as my favorite parts with him were his sadism, cruelty and child like nature. I also never realized how manipulative Armand was probably because I found him obnoxious and whiny right from his first few chapters in interview.
I'm not gonna lie, I liked Armand (partly because I saw something of myself in him, partly because his book is one of my favorites in the series) but now I'll have to re-read some books and reaccess my view of him
Yeah, Armand was a whiny prick even before Rice made him a teenage vampire in "Lestat". I think people forget that in the first book she never mentions his apparent age, just referring to him as an "auburn haired vampire".
@@tophers3756 Armand is one of the characters that has changed more over the books because he changes with what Anne Rice wants to talk about. So in some books like his own, he has this borderline obsessive love of religious icons/concepts and in others thats completely forgotten. He has the spirit of a martyr. I personally like him more after Anne Rice broke off with christianity. In the last two books Armand is someone who has an overprotective way to show love and is a just a bit too murder happy xD
A couple things that stood out to me in the book is Lestat crapping himself as he was turning into a vampire, along with the elder vampire with a broken mind after being immortal for so long. They're little things, but they're interesting world-building elements to me considering Rice's vampire lore, mostly because I can't think of many other vampire lores that address how our body would react to being turned, along with what actual strain to our minds/bodies if we continued on as an immortal vampire.
I really hoped they were going to do The Vampire Lestat as it's own thing, rather than jumping over the core stuff and fast tracking to Queen of the Damned. Queen of the Damned really should have been its own thing after the build of the Vamp Lestat... seeing Lestat as a mortal, his mom, the wolfpack... even though when you're reading the books you get the sense that while Louis most likely did see things differently from how they were because of his perspective, experience, and lens into that world... Lestat was clearly also a bit of an untrustworthy narrator, but hit on core aspects of truth that helped you understand why he was the way he was. It's 100% how he went from being a "foil" in interview to being the main character in most of the books moving forward. Queen of the Damned though wasn't my favorite of the books- though it had my favorite moments... Marius: You are the damnedest creature! You make me think of the old story about Alexander The Great. He wept when there where no more worlds to conquer. Will you weep when there are no more rules to break? Lestat: Ah, but there are always rules to break. Also Lestat kidnapping Louis to go harass David is honestly my favorite "scene" in all the books. It completely encapsulated such different personalities and the dynamic between Lestat and Louis is freakin' awesome. It also laid the ground work for the friendship he ends up building with David moving forward, which then makes what happens at the end of Tale of the Body Thief even more fucked up. Reading Queen of the Damned though- I always felt it would be a better movie, if the movie did the "show, don't tell" thing, I found much of it tedious because of the "tell, don't show". I feel like it was 50 pages, in different parts of the book, explaining why cannibalizing the dead was a beautiful thing. I get it, I understand, stop beating a dead horse with it. The big ass family tree that I think it took a few pages to really describe (probably not that many), could be shown with 1 camera dolly shot during characters talking about the family line. The shit Lestat went through when she went to all more 3rd world countries to kill 99 in 100 men, going from being high with power and then starting to realize how fucked up shit was. Him pleading with her at the end of the book that there are bombs, planes... that she wouldn't be able to do it in larger countries, people would find a way to end it- or something like that, it's been about 20 years or so since I've read it last. I wanted Tale of the Body Thief to be made, but you needed the background of TVL and a better telling of QotD- lots of people didn't like TotBT but it's honestly my fave of them all. Knock Lestat on his ass, make him helpless, force him to reassess crap, make him fear for his life again in a way where he is powerless and his survival is in the hands of a nun who's a nurse because he's too sick to do anything. People didn't like to see him beaten down, I thought it was great. People hated that at the end he was back to where he was- kinda- but it was in the course of being so powerless and starting to decide to not be the way he was, that made him redoubling down when he got his power back, and forcing shit on others because he could, make sense. Sometimes (not always of course), you take a person beaten down and give them ultimate (or massive) power over someone else, they can abuse that power. I didn't think the Lestat/David thing should have been smoothed over so quickly- But Lestat ending up with reporter boy at the end of the last movie instead of Armand made me realize the ripple affect it would have. Them skipping Lestat's childhood/human days? Ditto, and it's a shame. I think if they did a better job- or maybe did a TV show with talented writers who understood the books- where each season is a book ala the way Game of Thrones started out- it would have been hugely successful. Esp since those books vampires are such an interesting mix of alluring/sexy/sexual and terrifying as fuck.
I think Queen of the Damn is okay,but I had enjoyed The Tale of Body Theft. I recently had read Merrick, I even like that one lot. I really like Merrick that had focused mostly on David's character and his witch love interest,but I love the ending had shown Lestat saved Louis. 😁 I heard Hulu supposed to do the TV adaption of those books,but they had dropped out and Anne Rice is looking for different streaming service like Amazon or Netflix to pick up the TV adaption of her book. . Those vampire books does need a TV adaption,because those books makes you feels like watching a TV show when you're reading them. I even wrote a petition to get those vampire book series to get pick by Amazon. www.change.org/p/amazon-and-anne-rice-please-let-amazon-prime-pick-vampire-chronicle
@@shelliingle571 agree with everything here (I did like Merrick when I came to terms my immersion was destroyed by the crossover stuff)... And I would 100% sub to Shudder if they went for making it a series IF the creative team convinced me they really understood what made the series great...
@@eventhorizon At least Anne didn't mentioned Mayfair witches from that trilogy later on in her later books since Blood Cantice became nervous wreck, that I had heard. Well, I heard Shudder has good horror content and the remake of Creepshow was their popular show on there. I don't mind it will be on there,but I would see (hopefully) it will get up by Amazon Prime and Amazon Prime did really good job adapting stuff lately.
I loved this book so much I read it in one day. Practically in one sitting. Didn't hurt the boy I had a crush on asked to borrow it when I was done. I think what was done to Marius's character in that travesty of a movie was *tragic*, as well as the overlooking of Lestat's mother for the most part.
@@mikepen0287 I'm dying laughing now, lol. "Hello, 911? There's a prowler lurking outside my canon! It's dark, but I think she has midichlorians!" Anne Rice has different fans that I separate into groups based on when they hopped off the train. Almost all of them are on board for the first three. Some jumped off after "Tale of the Body Thief," because it felt like she jumped the shark. A lot bailed when "Memnoch the Devil" came out. For them, it wasn't so much that she jumped the shark with "Memnoch," she mounted the shark and flew it straight out of the park, crashing into the roof of a church. People who stuck it out were rewarded with "The Vampire Armand," a true return to form. Better, even. It might be my favorite. The only people who bailed on this one are the homophobes. It has "gay stuff." The next books, "Merrick" through "Blood Canticle," lost a LOT of readers. These were the crossover heavy books. Lots of witches running around. Then came the new stuff, "The Prince Lestat" and onward. For most fans who made it this far, they thought they could take anything. Then came the midichlorians. I'm still on the Anne Rice train, but I understand the reasoning of those who aren't. Still, my first question for someone who says they USED to like Anne Rice is, "Which book turned you off?" The answer is always interesting.
@@Revelwoodie If you care to know, I was hardcore on board for the first three. I actually like the body thief, I could live with memnoch. Armand I really loved, back on board. Merrick and everything after..... I thought it couldn't get any worse. .................And then came the fucking nanoparticles..... I haven't even read Atlantis. I couldn't. I read reviews of it. I am positive that I would just be unable to take it. It'd drive me mad. It's just too fucking dumb. Even after Prince Lestat I will just never be the same.
I have to say this before I watch the video. They made a musical about Lestat following this book and the first one. I saw it on Broadway in high school. Please try and find a recording of it. It is terrible. I'm not even saying review it. Just for your own fun. Though I wouldn't mind a mini episode of rambling about how bad it was.
Thank you! The Vampire Chronicles are my favorite. I read them the summer I turned 14 and my parents moved out to the country. These books changed me in ways I'm just not starting to appreciate.
Thanks so much for doing these summaries I tried several times and never got through these books. It is very nice to finally get the story, and as always I enjoy your humor while presenting it.
Lestat: What? Louis was for sure lying about me! He's such an unreliable narrator
Lestat's account: yeah I'm actually a really good person who only drinks from bad people and am so charismatic I break up cults just by showing them they're stupid :D
Yeah, I considered him a much less reliable narator than Louis, but funnier.
@@Carewolf True. "The Vampire Lestat" isn't really a retcon of "Interview," because future books point out that Lestat is just as unreliable a narrator as Louis, and he even admits it. It's basically the same thing that goes on in real life -- two people have their own version of events, and truth is somewhere in between.
Alex Hijinks the cult thing is kinda ironic because of who plays him.
@@thomasgrindol9124 the actor was involved in the cult?
@@katatsumuri-san9588 Tom Cruise is a part of Scientology
Lestat's mother on her almost-deathbed be like "SON. RUN AWAY, BE GAY, DO CRIME!" She's one of my favourite characters in the book tbh
I very liked this character too. She's a kind of cool mommy :-)
I love Gabrielle
I wish we've have a book about her! Like Armand and Marius has.
I agree. Many of the male vampires who get a lot of attention tend to be almost cartoonish and a bit one note. In contrast Gabrielle seems a lot more interesting. I'd like to know wth she's been up to.
@@mariaflorenciaalvarez1926 Anne Rice, sadly, claimed she doesn't "understand" Gabrielle and therefor can't write her point of view.
"Lestat seems OP"
Did you forget how many times he was set in fire, stabbed through the heart and declared dead in Interview? Lestat IS op.
I'm convince that Lestat is the result of an AU where Joseph Joestar put on the mask
Yep. 😏
He was also sired by an old vampire... and had a taste of the first’s as well.
@@juniperrodley9843 omg i cant unsee this
@@Kenshiro3rd yup. that's why Louis can't read minds and shit, too. Lestat made too many too soon. not enough vampire magic to go around.
I like the whole "What that guy said is bullshit! Here's my _real_ life story." thing for a sequel. It's a nice narrative trick.
Lestat is pretty damn good at being a manipulative jerk. However those of us who love reading his stories can’t help, but loving him regardless
I would love it if there was a series that just kept doing this perpetually. Each sequel taking a character from the previous biography and going "well that's not how it happened." Over time you gradually refine the true events down and add more to the timeline with each new character telling parts of the story none of the previous narrators were there for. It sounds both obnoxious and unironically kind of interesting. So basically perfect for me.
Worked for the New Testament, but it's not working at all in the TV show "What I said before was bullshit, because memory is completely flexible, depending on what you need your story to do!"
Random person: *attacks*
Lestat: I was shaking in my costum made Designer leather boots with the silver buckles
Growing a beard for isolation purposes.
I like it! Keep it growing
Taking on the vampire life I see (but obviously not lestats life)
Hey!!! Your videos never fail to make me smile!!! Have a great day and stay safe!!!
Dominic Noble indeed grand master
Are you planning on doing a last season of a series of unfortunate events?
"There's someone else in bed with him."
I'd say I've read that fan fiction before, but Anne Rice had them all purged from the internet before I got into The Vampire Chronicles.
RABNerd28 👏🏻👏🏻
zing!
Rule 34.
@@BewareTheLilyOfTheValley Agreed!
@@actuallyrandomperson Anne McCafferey's restrictions on fanfiction have actually kickstarted a couple of fantasy author careers.
Lestat is actually known as “the brat prince” in the books.
As well, he’s actually bisexual (in human terms), but prefers men over women. His reasoning first being that they were “boring” then later because they were “scary”.
@@satireknight Me, seeing Gabrielle with her sword: I think you're right!
Gay as a human, bi as vampire, because vampires dont really have sexuality (so in practice are bi, but it's somewhat asexual as well, but feeding on blood is better than sex, so...). He practically has a love affair with his turned mother too, since family vis genetics means nothing to vampires either - but again, love and "sex" (feeding) are not really sexual in human terms.
@@xBINARYGODx his mom and him had an odd relationship prior to vamping. But yea they do get weirder after that
Goldenglare_thewindeater After having a relationship with someone like Queen Akasha it’s only natural to find women scary.
Glad I'm not the only one finding his relationship with his mother weird (especially after he turned her)
I showed this notification to my wife and she dragged me out of bed to set this up on the big living room TV to watch
Awww couple goals
@@cocobako2582 indeed
I love how even though we're all adults now we still call it the "big tv" 🙃
I don't know why but I find the idea of Lestat not taking the threats from other vampires seriously because "what kind of vampire leaves upset messages on an answering machine?" hilarious
"Baggage isn't an infinite excuse to be a horrible person"
Mood.
I love Lestat so much, he is a very interesting and charismatic character that you can’t help but like him. I love that he wakes up in the 20th Century and decides “Fuck it, I want to become a rock star and make songs about vampire society as well as make my own memoirs to set the record straight.” I just love how the guy just gives zero fucks which makes so much more interesting.
Same as here.😁 I love Lestat,because he is a freaking Deadpool of all vampires. 😆
Ha! I hate Lestat, he's a narcissistic asshole.
And here I am, indifferent and just watching this video to see Dom's reaction.
I totally agree with you. I love Lestat's ability to explore boundaries. Many find him selfish, but to me he is just a character who loves the impossible, who wants to live life.
I actually have never liked him that much. Conceited and narcissistic characters don't appeal to me, nor do Mary Sues.
It’s official: your reviews make people smile even during a global pandemic. Thank you!
Can’t believe I never watched these videos before. It’s a lot of fun!
I like the idea of vampires staying at the level of maturity they had when bitten. But I think it’s best done in Tuck Everlasting where experience brings maturity, the more you experience and act like an adult, the more mature you become. So an immortal who never does anything but the things they did in their you, they stay at that maturity. But if they work and experience more, they become more mature.
(But could you imagine perpetual puberty?! Oh gods no!)
I think it's just the way Lestat himself sees the world in the beginning, from what I remember he starts maturing a LOT in later books (the fans were not pleased)
I mean you probably would be in perpetual puberty since your hormones stay all out of whack and that is what makes you so shit as a teenager.
That sounds horryfing actually
I like the idea too, but then again, I thought Claudia being a woman eternally trapped in a child's body much more horrifying.
They still develop mentally that's why child vampires are such a big taboo.
Lestat just has an old world French aristocrat attitude. He does still grow a bit mentally.. when something otherworldly happens...
i mean i think your dead body wouldnt be functioning enough anymore to go through with puberty, but what do i know, im not a vampire
I'll be honest, I found Louis's tragic story to be more compelling than Lestat yeeting his way through undeath. But I never really considered the two stories inherently better or worse than the other.
I would have loved the Vampire Chronicles to go farther with the idea of following the same chain of events told from the perspective of several different unreliable narrators over the years.
And letting the reader try to put together what was real and what was the narrator exaggerating, playing down, misreading or lying about what they experienced.
The Vampire Armand and Blood and Gold kind of go in this direction, it also shines a light on how Armand works
I hope you're enjoying the hell out of the TV show then!
I agree
I have no problem understanding or believing that two people can see the same situation very, very differently.
And hearing the way Louie suffered through his early immortal life, might actually be more valuable than Lestat's side of the story, if only so that we could see what Lestat looks like from the outside since we do the most of our viewing of him through his own eyes
One of the things that will never leave me when it comes to Vampire Lestat was the scene of him exploring the tower after magnus kills himself only to find a room full of the corpses of men with Lestats features. It's horrifyingly disturbing in its implications and Lestat has to deal with that alone. F- man
Wait until you get to the part where Lestat feeds by eating out a nun who is menstruating. Stay Classy Rice
Read her version of sleeping beauty. Whole new level there.
Man I fucking hate Tale of the body thief, menstruation blood is not just blood so thinking of a vampire drinking it s just bleh.
Add to the fact Lestat rapes a woman in it. Her later books after Queen are so disjointed and range from very bad to hey maybe this one isn't so bad. Like I mean I enjoyed the Armand book and Prince Lestat had it;'s moment. But damn Rice.
@@SkyExplosion Is it the kind of "bad" that makes you think her first works were ghostwriting, or just a general "she/her talent changed" bad?
@@randombrokeperson Her books have always walked the border between self therapy (working out the loss of her daughter) and her erotic fantasies - like her successors like Twilight. While they edge from quality work to crap, its not a lie.
East of Eden was straight up porn. So was her Sleeping Beauty trilogy. To me shes kinda like the hentai manga writers that go legit eventually....but never quite forget their roots
@@SkyExplosion that's what happens when you decide editors stifle your creativity. No editor = every stupid idea in your head looks like a masterpiece
One of the things I really liked about the first two books was their inception style nesting dolls of unreliable narrators. Both books were, in-universe, believed to be fiction claiming to be fact written by two different vampires each one telling the story from their perspective. So I go with the interpretation that BOTH books are essentially auto-fan-fiction written by Louis and Lestat.
Is fun because I could swear that somewhere Armand was kind of pissed at them for making him look bad. Even funnier because in the latest two books he has turned into a little ball of hate xD
@@naochan133 A subtle character point through the whole series is that the vampires have been in hiding forever, but Louis' book revelaed them, and made them look bad. And now they're vampire vanity can't take it so every vampire starts figuring out how to reveal themselves in a way that makes them look awesome because secretly they have ALL wanted to go public and live large.
One of the things I liked about the book is how Lestat sees the modern world (at least in the west). From his perspective it's way more equal and fair than it was in the past with average people having a lot more rights and privileges than ever before. It's something I appreciated even back in the 90's when I read the book because literature about the past focuses almost entirely about the well to do and/or nobility. It's not saying the modern world is perfect, but from Lestat's perspective way better than in his day.
One thing the Corona virus is showing is how wealthy, peaceful and complacent our society is. The current fashion from leftists/SJWs and their ilk of hating on the West and European culture is so stupid that it's hard to fathom. It's thanks to Europe and the US that we live in a time of abundance that would be unimaginable in the past, have democracy and a level of individual freedom that would also be unimaginable in the past, even by nobility standards. So peaceful that people are freaking out in dealing with an epidemic, something that was in fact commonplace in the past. The Black Plague alone decimated more than 70% of Europe's population in the course of some 100 years.
Alexandre Martins I think that while the people reacting badly to the pandemic has been on the news, the VAAAAST majority of people are adjusting their behavior to keep themselves safe and cooperating to make sure people get enough food and supplies necessary for everyday life. And that’s because we have incredibly good infrastructure compared to past decades and also instant communication on the Internet to coordinate activities.
“Carpe Jugulum," read Agnes aloud. "That's... well, Carpe Diem is 'Sieze the Day,' so this means-"
"Go for the throat”
― Terry Pratchett, Carpe Jugulum
Lestat's particular brand of unreliable narrator is about the best thing ever. There's like.... so much to unpack :D
I always liked these backstory episodes.
They are close in the race for my favorite
Agreed, they can almost be more fun than the adaptation episodes themselves
The image of Lestat rocking out made my morning.
Ah, Anne Rice, one of the few authors that's listed on Fanfiction as someone that does not allow fanfiction. She apparently went after a few fans hard when they did some fanfiction/art and really traumatised a few people.
So much so they hid their fanfics away and repeatedly ducked and dodged her wrath. I was too young to be on the internet at that time, but I hear it was one hell of a panicked ride.
Anne has always been a weirdo.
I’ve read the reports of how pissed she’s gotten if she finds fans wrote any form of fan-fiction. If it gets put online, she’s quickly gone to great lengths to have such things taken done; think even lawsuits have mentioned at least once
@@LucyLioness100 Its why private websites were chucked up.
Yeah, you basically had to sign a confidentiality agreement to access the few sites that had fic in those days. No fandom means no relevance these days, though, and a lot of the old guard are slowly realizing that.
"The Queen of the Damned" film was so bad, I thought it would kill vampire movies. Then "Twilight" came out, and I realized it had only killed good vampire movies.
not the best story, but also not the worst. funny enough the twilight movies are one of the best book adaptions i ever saw. everything is in it, nothing weird added. i think they deserve prize for that at least.
@@otakuofmine You're right. Let's ask Jared Leto for ideas.
@@fionatastic0.070 there are still many good vamp movies and shows afterwards (Byzantium, The Strain, The Originals)
@@angrytheclown801 what has Jared Leto to do with that??
I think you’re thinking of the Queen of the Damned film, which is a mish-mash of both The Vampire Lestat and Queen of the Damned with music videos.
I used to convince myself that the so-called "lies" of Interview with the vampire were actually true and it's Lestat's ego that makes him deny it. Lestat admits hew as in that he was in that house and in that condition, just denies that Louis saw him that way. Then how did Louis know what house he was in and the condition he was in? Armand hadn't told him. The only logical explanation is Lestat denies it for his own ego's sake.
"No restoration is worth being with an abuser." LOVE this line; but then again you have a large selection of clever lines! Well done.
someone clearly realized what's sexier than a sexy vampire? a sexy vampire rocking on guitar.
There's also half-blood vampires, but that a story for another time ;-)
Probably the only time when a sparkling vampire actually looks sexy. Just imagine that marble like skin under the stage lights
I think you can write a single book where the main character is full of self loathing. I'm not sure you can do a series that way. It's draining for a reader to deal with such a character over the the long haul, so movie Louis to a supporting role is probably for the best. From what I remember, Louis kind of develops a "murder is murder" attitude and finds the notion of only killing criminals to be hypocritical, although apparently that's what most of the others do (at least those on the "good" side).
It’s explained in books that if you drink innocent blood you get glimpses and visions and emotions of people you feed on and it accumulates to the point that you feel this eternal vampire “ptsd” type guilt and eventually want to go into sunlight, so they go after most deprived even then trough ages it affects them.
I remember when reading The Vampire Lestat, I kept waiting for the big reveal that Lestat had heavily fictionalized his history, that Interview was the "real" Lestat. I just couldn't see it going in any other direction, not with how absurdly "amazing" Lestat was portrayed. Except that reveal never happened. And he only became more "amazing", eventually turning into a full on vampire Superman. I expected him to reverse time by flying around the world, firing heat rays from his eyes, and to develop a weakness to Kryptonite. Instead, his weakness was just bad writing.
exactly, I just don't understand how people can prefer TVL over IwtV. Maybe they were kids when they read it and it's pure nostalgia? Because the writing quality... yeah you described it well. Aside from that what I hate about the book is the amount of gaslighting and just no. I can't get through sh*t like that. It's horrible to live through it but to have it thrown at me in fiction - I refuse to put myself through it. That is also why I never finished reading the book. Anne took the easiest and the sloppiest way to reboot her vampire universe - using the 'well, the victim was lying' approach. And we should love a sh*t character like that? nah
@@imaginefaraway I liked both when I read them as a teenager, but they do barely seem to belong in the same series. I think Anne Rice's writing always lurched between moody and introspective personal horror.....and pulpy adventure with a horror sheen between novels, (as well as some novels like the Mayfair Witches that kind of land in the middle). And you can see the fracture most clearly between the first two books of the Vampire Chronicles. TVL has a relentless energy to it that I really liked--I love the secret history of vampires that unfolds, and Gabrielle's turning blew my mind.
And yes, Lestat in Interview is an eerily perfect recreation of an abusive husband. Alternates between mean and vicious abuse and belittling, extravagant gestures of affection and pretending nothing ever happened. When his "spouse" looks likely to leave, he suggests having a "child" to fix the relationship, only to treat the "child" equally shabbily. At at the end of the novel, promises he can change, then immediately lapses into the same old bad habits.
i was about 13 when, freshly liberated from a cult like fundamentalist christian upbringing by my parents divorce, i stumbled across this book. it would not be an exaggeration to say it changed my life. it introduced me to so many different possibilities of thought.
Oh, man, when I was in college, I was *always* loaning out my vampire (and other supernatural) books to classmates whose parents would have blown their tops if they knew what their (adult) kids were reading.
I also loaned out Andrew Vachss, other such 'hard-core' genre, and science fiction, for some wild reason.
Even today, I still don't get why some people try to keep their kids from reading certain things.
IMHO, you can tell your kids why you think they should not read something. But if they really want to read it, they'll get it from a friend. Especially if they're in college, and out from under their parents'eyes.
@@bugeyedmonster2 in the age of internet piracy? Lol. There's no easier way to get a kid to read something in 2020 than to tell them they can't.
@@zetaforever4953 I was in college in the early 90s, so no internet then. (Y'all young folks don't know how good y'all have it. To do research, we had to go to the library, and look it up in a book! OTOH, there is a ton of crap web sites out there..... we certainly didn't have to wade through as much junk.)
I read some of the blogs like "No Longer Quivering" or "Love, Joy, Feminism", "Without a Crystal Ball".... not sure if "Recovering Grace" has really been updated.
But there's a new tactic on some of these controlling parents- not having internet, or having the computer in a 'common' room where they can keep an eye on what their kids are doing. (Now I understand keeping tabs on whom your kids are talking to on the internet. That 'cute' 14 year old your kid is communicating with on the internet might be really 40.) I was at "No Greater Joy" and Michael Pearl's daughter (Shoshanna, I think) was writing about keeping the kidlets off the internet, so that one can keep them 'pure' and untainted by those liberals, heathens, atheists, feminists (oh my) out there.
I feel sorry for some kids.
Now I'm wondering how much Jill Rodrigues' kids, or Steven Anderson's kids are allowed to get on the internet. (With Anderson, the oldest two have full time jobs, so they might be able to get contraband from their co-workers.)
@@bugeyedmonster2 well you can only do that until the kid has a personal smartphone. And nowadays, most kids have a smartphone by the time they're in highschool. I don't think it's any great loss to be deprived of the weirdness of the Internet until you're 14-15. I discovered BDSM at 13-14 and it vaguely freaked me out, lol. Plus, if the kid is resourceful enough, they'll get what they want from peers who have greater internet freedom. Trying to control them beyond the age of 16 is a lost cause these days, in my opinion.
I had free reign of my family's library (and internet, when it came along), so I'd read all kinds of weird sex stuff I didn't understand as a kid. Never seemed to bother my parents. I just ignored the stuff I didn't understand/wasn't interested in and moved on. I don't know why people think kids are such snowflakes who'll be scarred for life by something they read or watch. At worst, I'd be mildly weirded out for a couple of days and then forget about it. And it was the same for most kids I grew up with.
P.S. who's Steven Anderson. Or Jill Rodriguez, for that matter?
@@zetaforever4953 My parents never tried to control my reading either.
I'll admit that I'm mostly on ex-fundamentalists Christian web sites (like the ones I mentioned.) And a lot of the fundie Xtian parents trying to control their kids is that they want the kids to 'stay in the faith' and they think that if their kids read too much stuff from liberals, atheists, and feminists (oh my) their kids will be 'corrupted' and leave the faith.
And those left in the fundamentalism seem to be doubling down. They don't allow their kids to have cell phones. There are even some of the 'leaders' of this movement who think that the newer generations shouldn't even be allowed to go to college or trade school. (They might meet liberals, atheists, and feminists there!) It would be funny, if it weren't so creepy.
(Now I'm reminded of the Turpins. Those kids weren't even allowed out. And several were way past the age of 18._
(I swear, I look at Jill Rodrigues' kids, and I want to kidnap them, take them out to eat, buy them groceries, and burner phones.) It's like reading Eleanor Skelton's blog about The Girl Who Once Lived in a Box.
Ooo, this web page from Cult Education explains it a bit more....
culteducation.com/group/34251-the-daughters-great-escape.html
I was waiting for this for so long! I do have to admit that Lestat does feel like a more honest narrator than Louis maybe not in the OP way he portrays himself but in the little details he sprinkles throughout the story which make him sort of a self-aware brat. Example: When he mentions that he KNOWS Magnus chose him because he is so cool and special, and then almost immediately mentioning he was so hungry he went to eat a pile of corpses in Magnus' dungeon and then saw a pile of failed vampire experiments that literally all look like him, implying he was not chosen or special, just that Magnus had a type.
Or when he switches narrator from himself to Marius but has to make it VERY clear to the reader that when Marius mentions he is blond and cool and beautiful it's not Lestat himself trying to make himself look better, oh no, it's 100% what Marius thought at the time, fur reals! But then Marius never actually mentions that Lestat is particularly any more beautiful than any other vampire.
exactly. by the details of the book and how he sometimes debases himself, I agree that he was a writer more loyal to the facts (not to the truth, because that doesn't really exist, they are just points of view). And in the books narrated by Marius and Armand, they never deny what Lestat wrote, on the contrary, Armand practically confirms everything.
That intro is so Lestat.
The first three books in the Vampire Chronicles are amongst my very favorite books of all time... everything that comes after is getting mostly ignored in this household. Well, I did read the newest books and decided to treat them as entertaining crack fic, but those first three are my canon.
Indeed, I don't remember which book it was, but either the 4th or 5th maybe was a total strike out for me.
I was actually revolted at how Rice was treating her own characters, and decided to both drop the books and Rice as an author forever.
@@axelord4ever She lost me at Memnoch The Devil, I still hung on through Tale of the Body Thief the 4th book, which I consider the last good Vampire Chronicle. She should have stopped while she was ahead. Blending them with the Mayfair Witches was laughable.
Honestly, it does still seem quite a bit of a retcon from Interview, where she realized how popular Lestat became and/or she fell more in love with creation as time went on. Not necessarily a bad thing, but I do get a bit irked when authors do this because they decide they love certain characters. I can see it both ways, whether Louis was just that unreliable of a narrator because he resented Lestat and was dealing with his own guilt or Rice just loves Lestat that much and it was a deliberate retcon. I think it's possible to still enjoy both, though. I did read Interview back in high school, but unfortunately, due to my own personal opinion of Rice, I'm not quite sure I'd actually read the other books, so thank you for taking care of the work for the first three for me, Dom!
I think your closet is more extensive than the BBC's wardrobe department!
I mean they have like 1 shirt and 5 actors so...😂😂😉
"Leroy Jenkinsing his way through the world..." well THAT took me back some! LOL
I know no-one asked for a mini fandom history lesson, but I've seen several discussions of Anne's history with fan-works down in the comments and I think it'll help newer fans understand Anne's weird mindset/actions, and the sheer terror they induced, when put into the context of the period. Her reactions were more terrifying then than they seem now for the simple fact that her threats were genuine and existed in a period of total paranoia about fandom life.
At the time, read up to the late 90's, Fic writers lived in fear of Anne's team of bulldog lawyers with their cease and desist letters and threats of suing. Especially because she DID actually sue several people, including fans who had created their own fan sites dedicated to her books (I still flinch and startle when I come across a DeviantArt or Tumbler page dedicated to the Vampire Chronicles). Mind you, Anne wasn't the only author like this at the time, just the most well known for it.
This was during the period where the Rule # 1 dominated fandom (You didn't talk about fandom. Period.).
Any sort of fan-based creative endeavor dedicated to her books was ripped down or tucked into a dark seedy corner of the interwebs on password protected private sites, deeply buried in AngelFire and Geocities' servers where their creaters prayed she'd never find them. Fic writers/artists had less legal safety nets than we do now and our rights to write what we pleased came and went with the original creators' whims. An author could be fine with fanfiction one day, then turn around after finding a fic they didn't like and demand ALL fan-based works cease immediately. The fandom culture that members exist in now didn't exist then. You can thank creators/authors like Joss Whedon and JK Rowling who actively encouraged and even cultivated fan-based creative arts, for the existence fandom culture. If you've ever read a fic and seen a *Disclaimer* at the start of the story, these are a hold over from that period. It was our paltry attempt to defend ourselves and our works by declaring that we weren't claiming the original work as our own, but simply paying homage to the original's brilliance.... So PLEASE don't sue us! They didn't actually offer any legal defense, but it was always considered a necessary adage just in case. These days you'll usually only find disclaimers attached to older stories, fics written by older writers who add them by habit, or younger writers who add them because the older writers did.
These days Anne seems to have finally learned that avoiding fandom only hurts you as an author in today's fandom culture as she stated in 2012 that she was going to "live and let live" when it comes to fan fiction, acknowledging that some people use fanfiction as a spring board for improving their own writing and doesn't hamper the original author. I'm still paranoid that she may change her mind again, all the same.
My favorite book of the entire Vampire Chronicles series!
As tragic and chaotic as his "life" is, Lestat has a way of finding joy in his existence. Even Nikolas says that he has a light about him, where in Nickolas there is only dark. Of course events in later books really, really put that to the test, but even when Lestat gets a chance to be human again, he chooses his vampire life.
I also prefer how his relationship with Louis is depicted in this book compared to Interview. Lestat cared about him far more than Louis ever realized. It still pisses me off that Louis was erased completely for the QOTD movie.
Yeah, I had read The Tale of The Body and I had enjoyed that book. 😂 I don't blame him for disliked to being human and let his only human friend,but he winded up turning his friend into a vampire anyway.
The whole series deserves a mini series adaptation.
I'd be down with that. As long as it was treated seriously and was well cast. "The Vampire Lestat" movie shows you what can happen to this material when it's been cast by someone in a fever dream and the filmmakers treat it as if they are making "Blade 4."
@@Revelwoodie I want it to be given with the Game of Thrones treatment...well before GoT went off the rails.
@@Revelwoodie there’s been talks about it if you follow Rice’s Facebook you’ll see what she has to say about a possible series there.
@@SJ-xh1li Oh yeah, I forgot about that. I hope it eventually happens.
I heard Hulu was working on it,but they decided to dropped it because Warner Bros. owns the two films and Hulu is owned by Disney. Anne Rice is looking for a streaming service that could do it the tv adaptation like Netflix or Amazon. I did wrote a petition for Amazon picking up the tv adaption of it. www.change.org/p/amazon-and-anne-rice-please-let-amazon-prime-pick-vampire-chronicle?. I did tweeted Netflix to pick the series up. I really hope The Vampire Chronicles will get pick up by Netflix or Amazon Prime in the future. 😳 Because those books makes you're watching a tv show.
I think this is a really clever way of doing a soft reboot.
last time i was this early, he was still called The Dom
Interesting origin for Akasha. I like it a lot more than the whole "deal with the devil" trope that's been done to death by Dracula. Corruption via ghost or demon is a lot more interesting IMO
Sometimes biblical effects can make story quite intricate, it is, after all, the greates work of fiction of all times. The whole deal with a devil can be a very flat plot point if left unexplored, for sure, but other kind of biblical elements can offer quite incredible platforms for stories. For example White wolfs world of darkness has vampiric lore that stems from story of Cain and Abel, ultimately creating a religion system for vampires, Cain being their god figure, the first vampire, whose curse of blood they belive to have inherited. Cain is also the one some beleve will return in Gehenna (end of time) to judge all decentants of Antedeluvians (3rd generation vampires). True to religion, in cannon, modern day (count in anything from medieval times to this day) vampires can't agree on detales of Book of Nod (basicly their obscure bible), exsistance of Cain or Gehenna, some actively denying any actual truth to the stories.
This was needlesly long comment about one fragment of my favourite vampiric lore, I'm sorry.
@@Kardinaalilintu look, not trying to be rude, but referring to a major modern religion as "the greatest work of fiction of all time" is more then a little disrespectful to those who practice it. Plus, come on, Megamind the movie is right there
Ah yes the 80’s, a time in hard rock where it was still unusual for band members to pretend to be vampires.
Now we just have Powerwolf and nobody bats an eye about it. The past truly was a simpler, but not necessarily better, time.
David Bowie didn't have to pretend to be a vampire.
Bless you. This totally made my night. If I ever get too stressed about current world events, I can just think to myself, "If Lestat can survive the 1800s...I'll make it through 2020"
Good evening everyone! The things that I loved the most in the novel were when, on her death bed, Lestat's mother told him "You are not alive anymore" and when she gave him her consent to be turned into a vampire 🧛♀️🧛♀️🧛♀️
The movie is trash honestly, but its my trash and I LOVE IT.
I preferred 'The Vampire Lestat' to 'Interview with the Vampire, too!
Same
I like how, this thing has several hundred upvotes thus far and not a single dislike. I know that's gonna change eventually, but still, nice to see for a change, and certainly this is a reviewer who deserves that >w>
You jinxed the dislikes
The dislikes are inevitable but its nice while it lasts ^__^
@@Dominic-Noble Never mind; it's all "engagement" to the algorithm! ;-D
1 month later and it has 13k likes and 55 dislikes. That's pretty amazing.
I've never actually read it, granted, but I don't see how a woman wearing trousers is automatically a gender identity thing. I wouldn't want to go live my new free life in the wilderness wearing four layers of skirts and a whalebone corset! It might cramp your vampiric style somewhat.
I mean, yeah, she's wearing "men's trousers", but it's not as if there was such a thing as women's trousers, in the time period. And women quite like trousers. We're not hard wired with a love of skirts. Seems like a rare case of a lady vampire making a sensible wardrobe choice, to me.
Bella Swan, take notes. Hunting deer in an evening gown is ludicrous behaviour. I don't care HOW hungry you are, or how resistant to chafing your shiny diamond skin is. That silk dress isn't, and if you keep flinging yourself at tree trunks and scrambling up cliff faces in it, you'll be flashing the whole of Forks before too long
Obligatory not a twilight fan introduction to the comment over, in the book she does tear the dress to smithereens and Edward puts his own shirt on her so that her tiddies won't be in everyone's faces when they head back home😅
Gabrielle actually also tries to cut her hair short, but finds it regrows every day during her vampire sleep - which inspires her to experiment with hairstyles a lot.
@Lovely_Theaceae Women choosing to wear practical clothes - instead of restrictive corsets and a hundred layers of delicate expensive fabrics you would have lived in fear of tearing or staining because of the sheer cost / effort of repairing them - isn't a sign they don't want to be women anymore, it's just common sense. Google the Rational Dress Movement!
And dress sense in the eighteenth century flies in the face of what we consider to be genderered norms today anyway. 18th century men wore their hair long and curly, little boys wore petticoats, and pink was considered a perfectly masculine color.
As soon as women had an "excuse" to wear practical clothing like trousers - with the advent of the bicycle, for instance, or the explosion in the amount of women working farm and factory jobs in World War Two - they did so. Women want to be comfortable. They were just held back from being so before then by a patriarchal society that insisted their primary function was as baby making ornaments. Freed from this expectations, it's not surprising a vampire would reject traditional female dress where she could. The only surprising thing is that more fictional vamps don't take the same approach! But then, female vampires are mostly written for an audience that expects them to be immortally beautiful goddesses or sexy femme fatales. It's the conventions of the genre.
@Lovely_Theaceae At that time, women working in certain jobs were already wearing trousers, had been for a while. Yes, in general women wore skirts and men wore trousers, but it was no absolute and the punishment for breaking those rules was social (aka being considered weird and avoided by a certain number of people on one's own social tier, unless one was a worker), not legal.
@Lovely_Theaceae Yeah, exactly. Skirts can be restrictive anyway, but climb high enough up the social ladder and you might find your clothing became so cumbersome you couldn''t even walk through doors head on, or sit down properly. Even if you didn't have to deal with all that, there were still the day to day annoyances of petticoats trailing in the mud, shawls slipping off your shoulders, etc. Shirt, trousers and jacket, is just an easier mode of dress. You can walk, climb, ride do pretty much anything you like in it. The same can't be said for most of women's day-to-day clothing, up until the 20th century and even today. Look at the functionality of little girl's clothing compared to little boy's, or compare the unnecessarily skimpy shorts and cleavage-exposing v-necks in women's versions of sport kits. Or compare any uniform that demands women wear skirts and high heels to work, while men get to go about their day in trousers and flat shoes.
And I absolutely second your other reply about the reasons women submitted to the social pressure to wear this less practical clothing, and the consequences if they did not. I don't know who all these trouser wearing women were that other commenter was talking about. The cast majority of working class women from the 16th to 20th centuries wore stays or corsets, and dresses that were just of a material less fine than their mistresses. Wools and linens instead of cottons and silks. The idea that you could causally walk down the street and see a woman in trousers is not accurate. I'm not saying no woman ever wore trousers, but it didn't become a social norm until about the 1930's.
I didn't really like Interview With the Vampire, I thought it was too depressing and dark, but I gave The Vampire Lestat a chance and I LOVED IT. It's one if my favorite books. Lestat's and Louis' reunion made me cry, ngl
you probably wont see my comment, but this is honestly my comfort youtube video i always come back to this when ever im upset
When I was in the peak of my meth addiction my car radio would only work with tapes and the only tapes I had was the vampire Lestat I used be able to quote the whole novel word for word
one of my greatest sources of pride and shame is that I actually saw Lestat: The Musical live.
This blew my mind when I was 14. I'd just watched IWTV, loved it, and then my sister gave me a copy of this book. The Vampire Chronicles became my first online fandom in '98. You're right. You never really forget your first love.
Sleeping as a way to avoid all your problems is very relatable
That cold open left me in tears of laughter!!
so, a fanfiction of the vampire chronicles? which anne rice is known to hate? im in
If this is fanfiction, what would you call later books? Things get so wack even Rice herself admits she got too carried away
The entire series is basically fan fic of Interview. The only difference is that it happens to have been written by the original author.
By the way, talking about Queen Akasha: am I the only one that finds her suspiciously similar to Princess Akivasha from "The Hour of the Dragon"?
I mean, she comes from the ancient kingdom of Stygia, that following Hyborian Age canon, is the Egypt before there was an Egypt, and have very similar names.
Did Anne Rice took inspiration from Robert E. Howard, or are both characters inspired in a previous vampiric myth I'm unfamiliar with?
JohnnyElRed I guess they’re both inspired by Lilith the she-demon from biblical lore. As for the Egyptian connection I don’t know really.
And Akasha from The Last Vampire by Christopher Pike
@@carsonsmith7314 Lilith isnt mentioned in the bible as person (but just as 'nightactive animals' in a sentence), she appears in an early version (apocrypha) and is there inspired from the actual babylonian/sumerian etc goddess Lilitu/Inannu/Ishtar, mostly a goddess of war and/or the underworld.
Howard's world describes the one out of the myths of Lovecraft, he was a friend and huge fan. Many people connected their stories to one or both of them since decades, so its not surprising.
Akasha is a Sanskrit word that essentially means ether. Very easy to make into a feminine sounding name and it has metaphysical ties. Egypt is choice for placing a fictional civilization that is supposed to be one of the earliest, if not the earliest civilizations. There is a lot known about ancient Egypt and there were organized civilizations in those lands for almost 3,000 years before it even became ancient Egypt.
The soundtract to Queen of the Damed is still a banger.
You should do the tv show adaptation now, since the book is completely different from how they did the movie version, 30 years ago. And I can finally say, the show did it better as an adaptation and making it close to how the book is dealt with. Since it is a two part show, it is close to how the book is written.
I’m super excited on how their going to do season 3 and show rocker lestat. I also love how they show the beauty of recollection.
I was actually interested to know more about these books. I'm also happy to see a non romance book.
you mean as genre? cause it has lots of romances in it :P
Auburnt Vixen I mean as the genre like it’s a lost in adaptation rather than a thing focused round a specific genre
Same. I'm fine with Dominic doing so many videos on romance, but I also appreciate seeing something slightly different every once in a while.
Vampire Chronicles only escape being romance novels by not being shelved in that section.
you have no idea how bad I needed more Dom right now AND he did vampires again HELL YAS!!
That shirt has to be a quote from something, and it's driving me insane that I don't know where.
Its not. Its just a random thing.
It's an old meme
@@Dominic-Noble I love that shirt and one day it will be mine!! (when i have some extra funds)
Got a new gif outta this
It's funny that this comes so soon after FilmJoy's Deep Dive on Queen of the Damned.
Yeah I was about to comment as such. I enjoyed that Deep Dive a lot, even though I'm not a vampire fan personally. That movie was fun. I remember seeing it in the theaters when it came out. Even then I was like "ok this is fairly over the top", but I'd come to expect that from 90-2000's vampire stuff. All the sex and leather cranked up to 11. But it was still pretty fun.
You've just reminded me this is in my watch later playlist!
My mom likes the Queen of the Damned movie (and most certainly has not read the books) so I'm interested in seeing how it differs from the books
There's no nu-metal in the QOTD movie, only angsty rock and alt and hard rock. The soundtrack was the only good thing to come out of that movie and it sounds like where the budget mostly went.
lain iwakura No lie, the soundtrack is still in solid rotation amongst my friends and I whenever we want to get nostalgic.
@@lainiwakura1776 I still enjoy Disturbed's version of "Forsaken," from time to time...
@@lainiwakura1776 it was called nu-metal back then, just fyi.
15:40 That was hilarious because that's exactly what Marius was trying to warn him about Akasha.
This was my favorite of the Vampire Chronicles. I read The Vampire Lestat to pieces. Yes, the series does go off the rails a bit but it is all such a fun read that you don't care.
I love all the books, and take the ups and downs in stride. But if I had to pick just one, I think it would be "The Vampire Armand."
So Interview with the Vampire actually became a book in the actual story? That's meta as fuck.
Can't wait for the rest. That movie was a defining moment of my adolescence. The sexy, SEXY vampires, the bathtub scene and that soundtrack is perfection!
A: I think I want to read this book now (I was rather put off Rice by "the witching hour", but this sounds insane in a good way)
B: This reminded me of the confusing complaints I ran across regarding (blink-and-you'll-miss-it) homoeroticism in the recent Netflix 'Dracula'. I remember thinking: "Uh, guys? Are you not aware this has been a thing with vampires basically forever?" Sure, a lot of people haven't read 'Carmilla' or this book, but the "Interview with the vampire" movie came out ages ago and is still pretty well known.
Knowing a bit of vampire fiction (world of darkness in particular) the fact that Lestat's sire was a VERY powerful vampire could explain quite a bit of why he seems so incredibly powerful as well. Power of the blood and such.
When you're an aristocratic, great and terrible immortal but _Bela Lugosi's Dead. Undead, undead, undead, undead._
Armand is such a little psychopath: I adore him 😂
Already a thrall of the Maiden of the Eventide.
Maven
@@alisaurus4224 Thanks, did not notice.
That piano music reminded me of the Christmas carol, "what child is this?" I sang that carol for four years in school so I'm constantly singing to myself, "the babe, the son of Marry" all throughout the review. Weird how stuff like that comes back around, isn't it?
Fun fact, that song a) didn't start life as a Christmas Carol and b) has a shit ton of variations and origin stories running about. I'm actually kind of annoyed that I grew up knowing it only as a Christmas Carol because whenever I hear it outside of that context, I have the same problem - the Christmas lyrics just auto-start in my brain and I find it very jarring.
It's also the tune of Greensleeves and is iirc very old, which is probably why it's in this video.
It was greensleeves
We need more of these, Thank you for blessing us with an upload father
I'm going to be honest I also didn't like that Lestat was turned into merciful character, it bugged me as my favorite parts with him were his sadism, cruelty and child like nature. I also never realized how manipulative Armand was probably because I found him obnoxious and whiny right from his first few chapters in interview.
I'm not gonna lie, I liked Armand (partly because I saw something of myself in him, partly because his book is one of my favorites in the series) but now I'll have to re-read some books and reaccess my view of him
@@shizotypical ya hearing Dominic's review makes me realize things about the books I either missed or forgot.
Yeah, Armand was a whiny prick even before Rice made him a teenage vampire in "Lestat". I think people forget that in the first book she never mentions his apparent age, just referring to him as an "auburn haired vampire".
@@tophers3756 Armand is one of the characters that has changed more over the books because he changes with what Anne Rice wants to talk about. So in some books like his own, he has this borderline obsessive love of religious icons/concepts and in others thats completely forgotten. He has the spirit of a martyr.
I personally like him more after Anne Rice broke off with christianity. In the last two books Armand is someone who has an overprotective way to show love and is a just a bit too murder happy xD
I was literally, (no pun) JUST thinking about when we would get the sequels! Thank You!! (Edit: I just got my notification.. wt??)
A couple things that stood out to me in the book is Lestat crapping himself as he was turning into a vampire, along with the elder vampire with a broken mind after being immortal for so long. They're little things, but they're interesting world-building elements to me considering Rice's vampire lore, mostly because I can't think of many other vampire lores that address how our body would react to being turned, along with what actual strain to our minds/bodies if we continued on as an immortal vampire.
I really hoped they were going to do The Vampire Lestat as it's own thing, rather than jumping over the core stuff and fast tracking to Queen of the Damned.
Queen of the Damned really should have been its own thing after the build of the Vamp Lestat... seeing Lestat as a mortal, his mom, the wolfpack... even though when you're reading the books you get the sense that while Louis most likely did see things differently from how they were because of his perspective, experience, and lens into that world... Lestat was clearly also a bit of an untrustworthy narrator, but hit on core aspects of truth that helped you understand why he was the way he was.
It's 100% how he went from being a "foil" in interview to being the main character in most of the books moving forward.
Queen of the Damned though wasn't my favorite of the books- though it had my favorite moments...
Marius: You are the damnedest creature! You make me think of the old story about Alexander The Great. He wept when there where no more worlds to conquer. Will you weep when there are no more rules to break?
Lestat: Ah, but there are always rules to break.
Also Lestat kidnapping Louis to go harass David is honestly my favorite "scene" in all the books. It completely encapsulated such different personalities and the dynamic between Lestat and Louis is freakin' awesome.
It also laid the ground work for the friendship he ends up building with David moving forward, which then makes what happens at the end of Tale of the Body Thief even more fucked up.
Reading Queen of the Damned though- I always felt it would be a better movie, if the movie did the "show, don't tell" thing, I found much of it tedious because of the "tell, don't show". I feel like it was 50 pages, in different parts of the book, explaining why cannibalizing the dead was a beautiful thing. I get it, I understand, stop beating a dead horse with it.
The big ass family tree that I think it took a few pages to really describe (probably not that many), could be shown with 1 camera dolly shot during characters talking about the family line.
The shit Lestat went through when she went to all more 3rd world countries to kill 99 in 100 men, going from being high with power and then starting to realize how fucked up shit was. Him pleading with her at the end of the book that there are bombs, planes... that she wouldn't be able to do it in larger countries, people would find a way to end it- or something like that, it's been about 20 years or so since I've read it last.
I wanted Tale of the Body Thief to be made, but you needed the background of TVL and a better telling of QotD- lots of people didn't like TotBT but it's honestly my fave of them all. Knock Lestat on his ass, make him helpless, force him to reassess crap, make him fear for his life again in a way where he is powerless and his survival is in the hands of a nun who's a nurse because he's too sick to do anything.
People didn't like to see him beaten down, I thought it was great. People hated that at the end he was back to where he was- kinda- but it was in the course of being so powerless and starting to decide to not be the way he was, that made him redoubling down when he got his power back, and forcing shit on others because he could, make sense. Sometimes (not always of course), you take a person beaten down and give them ultimate (or massive) power over someone else, they can abuse that power.
I didn't think the Lestat/David thing should have been smoothed over so quickly-
But Lestat ending up with reporter boy at the end of the last movie instead of Armand made me realize the ripple affect it would have. Them skipping Lestat's childhood/human days? Ditto, and it's a shame. I think if they did a better job- or maybe did a TV show with talented writers who understood the books- where each season is a book ala the way Game of Thrones started out- it would have been hugely successful.
Esp since those books vampires are such an interesting mix of alluring/sexy/sexual and terrifying as fuck.
I think Queen of the Damn is okay,but I had enjoyed The Tale of Body Theft. I recently had read Merrick, I even like that one lot. I really like Merrick that had focused mostly on David's character and his witch love interest,but I love the ending had shown Lestat saved Louis. 😁
I heard Hulu supposed to do the TV adaption of those books,but they had dropped out and Anne Rice is looking for different streaming service like Amazon or Netflix to pick up the TV adaption of her book.
. Those vampire books does need a TV adaption,because those books makes you feels like watching a TV show when you're reading them. I even wrote a petition to get those vampire book series to get pick by Amazon. www.change.org/p/amazon-and-anne-rice-please-let-amazon-prime-pick-vampire-chronicle
They really need to do a good television version and it would be possible now.
@@moondreams876Agreed. ☺ I would love to see it will get pick up by Netflix or Amazon Prime. Shudder would be a good choice, too.
@@shelliingle571 agree with everything here (I did like Merrick when I came to terms my immersion was destroyed by the crossover stuff)...
And I would 100% sub to Shudder if they went for making it a series IF the creative team convinced me they really understood what made the series great...
@@eventhorizon At least Anne didn't mentioned Mayfair witches from that trilogy later on in her later books since Blood Cantice became nervous wreck, that I had heard.
Well, I heard Shudder has good horror content and the remake of Creepshow was their popular show on there. I don't mind it will be on there,but I would see (hopefully) it will get up by Amazon Prime and Amazon Prime did really good job adapting stuff lately.
18:26 "Strange" doesn't even _begin_ to explain it.
I am still looking forward to whenever you feel comfortable enough to do your takes on The Good Omen TV series.
Made my night, kinda cant sleep. Thanks for the video, Dom
That opening is everything!
Have I already read this book? Yes.
Did I watch this entire video? Also yes.
And that loustat reunion at the end is probably my favorite bit
Is Dom doing all the Vampire Chronicles? Because now I really want a review of The Vampire Armand
That was the last Vampire Chronicles book I read. I got so creeped out by what he did to Claudia.
I loved this book so much I read it in one day. Practically in one sitting. Didn't hurt the boy I had a crush on asked to borrow it when I was done.
I think what was done to Marius's character in that travesty of a movie was *tragic*, as well as the overlooking of Lestat's mother for the most part.
Wait... There is another Eventide? I thought I was the last. Aaaaand subbed.
Loved it!! Take care of yourself and Sir Terry!! Gonna watch this video another few times and can't wait for the next one!!
Your cat looks a lot like my cat Merlin, who's also a floofy butthead.
The Dom & Maven of the Eventide collaborating is such a dream!!! 😍
There’s a new book now! The Prince Lestat. Came out a couple years ago.
That is an abomination we do not speak of. Same with the Atlantis one.
@@NexusAkayuki Well there is Prince Lestat from 2014 and the new one Blood Communion: A Tale of Prince Lestat.
@@SkyExplosion wait she wrote another after the tales of atlantis?? One more book and I'm gonna tell the police man where mrs rice touched my fandom.
@@mikepen0287 I'm dying laughing now, lol. "Hello, 911? There's a prowler lurking outside my canon! It's dark, but I think she has midichlorians!"
Anne Rice has different fans that I separate into groups based on when they hopped off the train. Almost all of them are on board for the first three. Some jumped off after "Tale of the Body Thief," because it felt like she jumped the shark.
A lot bailed when "Memnoch the Devil" came out. For them, it wasn't so much that she jumped the shark with "Memnoch," she mounted the shark and flew it straight out of the park, crashing into the roof of a church.
People who stuck it out were rewarded with "The Vampire Armand," a true return to form. Better, even. It might be my favorite. The only people who bailed on this one are the homophobes. It has "gay stuff."
The next books, "Merrick" through "Blood Canticle," lost a LOT of readers. These were the crossover heavy books. Lots of witches running around.
Then came the new stuff, "The Prince Lestat" and onward. For most fans who made it this far, they thought they could take anything. Then came the midichlorians.
I'm still on the Anne Rice train, but I understand the reasoning of those who aren't. Still, my first question for someone who says they USED to like Anne Rice is, "Which book turned you off?" The answer is always interesting.
@@Revelwoodie If you care to know, I was hardcore on board for the first three. I actually like the body thief, I could live with memnoch. Armand I really loved, back on board. Merrick and everything after..... I thought it couldn't get any worse.
.................And then came the fucking nanoparticles.....
I haven't even read Atlantis. I couldn't. I read reviews of it. I am positive that I would just be unable to take it. It'd drive me mad. It's just too fucking dumb. Even after Prince Lestat I will just never be the same.
seeing a video talking about a series that was such a big part of my teenage years made me really happy. thank you, i can't wait for the next one!
I have to say this before I watch the video.
They made a musical about Lestat following this book and the first one. I saw it on Broadway in high school.
Please try and find a recording of it. It is terrible. I'm not even saying review it. Just for your own fun. Though I wouldn't mind a mini episode of rambling about how bad it was.
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Thank you! The Vampire Chronicles are my favorite. I read them the summer I turned 14 and my parents moved out to the country. These books changed me in ways I'm just not starting to appreciate.
I can feel that- like sucks, I'm going to hide in a hole in the ground. Seems legit.
Thanks so much for doing these summaries I tried several times and never got through these books. It is very nice to finally get the story, and as always I enjoy your humor while presenting it.
RIP Anne Rice