Once an aristocrat in the heady days of pre-revolutionary France, now Lestat is a rockstar in the demonic, shimmering 1980s. He rushes through the centuries in search of others like him, seeking answers to the mystery of his terrifying exsitence. His story, the second volume in Anne Rice’s best-selling Vampire Chronicles, is mesmerizing, passionate, and thrilling.
I’m going to just put this out there: Lestat is among the most fascinating minds I’ve ever been inside in literature. He just is. I understand that this is an erotic horror novel but that doesn’t diminish the truth of that statement. This book holds up to the test of time. I re-read it , and found out that I had not had a silly teenage fancy about it.
Lestat is just one of those… well the main review says Faustian, and I’m going to have to agree. His journey through sensuality, spirtuality, violence and meaning is one of the most fascinating I’ve ever read. It comes to a culmination in “Memnoch the Devil,” I feel, but this is where it begins. Lestat is a thoroughgoing bastard with lines like “I can’t help that I’m a gorgeous fiend. It’s just a card a drew,” and “I don’t like myself, you know. I love myself, and I’m committed to myself to my dying day, but I don’t like myself.” You can’t help but want to know more about him. Mythical, poetic, grand, larger than life. He just sucks you up into his story. I defy anyone to read this and not end up caring for this mind deeply. It’s just so beautiful. I think his journey through the chronicles is very much Odysseus-like. Except that he does not know where his home is, and he rejects the very idea of it. But that’s what he’s searching for all the same.
Perhaps I got attached to these at a young age, so I have a different perspective. But I think you can appreciate his passion, and the beauty with which it is expressed until a far older age than that.
