actually I reading The Vampire Armand

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And that brings me to two points:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Compare with Simon Vance version.

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

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

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

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

Not bad for $3.

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

Hi all!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

So let me begin by saying flatly that I am old. I will be 38 this Saturday. One of the more...intriguing things about getting old is seeing how reactions to the things I like change. Newer fans come in with newer interests and tastes. At times, I can barely recognize the Buffy fandom and people a bit more "in the know" than I am point to social media like TikTok strongly influencing the perception of younger watchers. I never go on TikTok and I watched the show since it debuted so I come in with very different perceptions.

This is a preamble to say that I look at topics on here about certain elements of the VC or certain events and it's clear that newer fans are bothered by things which never bothered me. It was quite literally the opposite - the most shocking and "taboo' stuff of the Vampire Chronicles was why I read it in the first place. I was a teenage nerd in the 2000s, this shit was my bread and butter. There's a manga called Angel Sanctuary which I read because of all the "oooh, you can't do that!" in the story. Incest and rape and cannibalism - you don't see stories like that very often growing up so you get to a certain age and you want to explore the different and "forbidden." (Or so I thought. Younger readers these days seem to move away from stuff like that) I am a lot older and I no longer read the VC just for its taboo-ness but I can't deny that lured me in as a teenager just like I read AS for similar reasons.

And so we get to the point. When I first read up to TVA forever ago, my perception was that Marius was one of the most popular characters. I certainly remember Blood and Gold was held up as the best of the later Vampire Chronicles books according to the people I talked to. It's always been a wide consensus the series falls off in quality at some point but B&G was supposed to be very good and nearer the higher quality of the earlier novels. Maybe I misinterpreted that as people liking Marius.

But I'm here to ask people what they think. Is Marius more hated these days due to changing sensitivities like I outlined above? Has he fallen off in popularity in the fandom?

I only have an old german copy with the movie poster.

Honest question. Louis’ brother dies on pg 9. 2 pages later Lestat is drinking Louis’ blood. 5 pgs after that Lestat and his father are living in Louis’ plantation.

Was Louis’ brother murdered to pave the way for Lestat to take over Pointe du Lac?

Was Lestat already coveting Pointe du Lac and taking steps to consolidate ownership before finally “introducing” himself into Louis’ story as vampire and victim?

The “Prince Lestat” & “Violin” ebooks by Anne Rice are on sale on Amazon US.

Limited time offer!

A friend of mine recently got this copy of Vittorio as "autographed edition" but the signature is a little weird. It kinda looks printed, it is on the last page instead of the first and it's only "Anne". Does anybody have the same book and can tell if it's printed into all of them, or if it might be real or not? Thank u in advance!

So I posted here a couple years ago under my old account. I read TVL for the first time - or rather listened to it - and posted a few threads on my thoughts. I then got distracted and wandered off, which is a very bad habit of mine.

I randomly get in a VC mood again and discover there are brand new audiobooks for 1-3. Color me very intrigued. I love Simon Vance but I think his voice works best for Louis, not Lestat. Frank Muller was...not an ideal choice for TVL but I didn't have any other choices back then.

Now with all these new audiobooks, I'm thinking of going through IWTV and TVL again, God help me. What did you all think of the new audiobooks if you have heard them?

I should probably just move onto Queen of the Damned, anyway. That audiobook just came out a couple months ago.

I have been rewatching from season one. Louis and Lestat have become my favorite couple on TV. It’s because their love is so strong yes it’s toxic but hell they’re immortal so there that.

But I believe Lestat genuinely fell in love with Louis at first sight. I believe Louis felt something too, he was projecting his feelings out there and Lestat was hearing and seeing how Louis felt. So they had a love connection before Lestat turned Louis. When Louis was explaining the loud ponding from drinking Lestat’s blood, which end up being their hearts syncing. Enter the Vampire bond it intensifies their bond. That’s the cord that Lestat was talking about in season one finale and what he song about in Brutal love.

Happy birthday to Michele "Mouse" Rice and Claudia! 🥳🎂

I'm currently reading/listening through the series and am about 2/3 through The Vampire Armand. Are the books following this one still as religious/theological?

I'm sure when one has eternity to ponder about things, combined with the age they're currently living in, I suppose it makes sense, but it's wearing on me as a reader. :-/

Are the remaining books similar in this regard?

[And whewwww...Armand is going through it. What a terrible life 😳😅]