Here’s 560 pages of hokum to get your teeth into. After a decades-long subterranean slumber, The Vampire Lestat awakens to a highly commercialised modern world. Captivated by the era, he joins a mortal rock band, becomes an international superstar, and explicitly breaks the sacred vampire law of secrecy by revealing his true nature to humanity through his music and an upcoming autobiography.
The core of the novel flashes back to 18th-century pre-Revolutionary France, detailing Lestat’s transformation and early existence. Born into impoverished nobility in The Auvergne, Lestat is a rebellious youth who runs away to Paris to become an actor. His passion and brilliance attract Magnus, an ancient, unhinged vampire. Magnus abducts Lestat, forcefully gives him the ‘Dark Gift’, and promptly commits suicide by stepping into a fire, leaving Lestat wealthy but entirely clueless about vampire society.
In Paris, Lestat then encounters a coven of devil-worshipping vampires led by Armand. He shatters their archaic, gloomy beliefs, prompting them to abandon their subterranean catacombs and form the Theatre of the Vampires.
The novel shifts back to the 1980s on the eve of Lestat’s massive rock concert in San Francisco. Vampires worldwide are furious at him for exposing their secrets, and many converge to destroy him. Despite the danger, the concert goes ahead. The story ends on a massive cliffhanger. Lestat’s music and potent blood have fully awakened the ancient Queen Akasha, who abducts him, setting the stage for the next book in the series, The Queen of the Damned.
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Anne Rice died in 2021 (Anne Rice, who breathed new life into vampires, dies at 80 | PBS News)
560 pages in Sphere paperback
First published 1985
ISBN-13 : 978-0751541960
Anne Rice