They had their own society, secreted away from the world of mortals, with its own strict rules. Of these vampires, there was none vainer or more charismatic than the vampire Lestat—and, therefore, none as popular.
These were the blood drinkers as created by Anne Rice for her series The Vampire Chronicles.
The New Orleans native has written other stuff (most notably erotic fairy tales under the pen name A.N. Roquelaure) but she is best known for the 12 vampire books, starting with 1976’s “Interview with the Vampire,” all the way to 2003’s “Blood Canticle,” selling millions of books and spawning two motion-picture adaptations.
After “Canticle,” Rice turned to writing novels fictionalizing the events in the life of Jesus Christ, eschewing the fanged fare that had made her famous. Meantime, Stephenie Meyer’s “Twilight” and Charlaine Harris’ Sookie Stackhouse novels made the vampire safe for prom night, birthing teen vampire franchises.
Hipsterization of vampires
In interviews, Rice admits being underwhelmed by this hipsterization of the Children of the Night. She walked the talk, writing her first vampire book in over a decade. From the title alone, you already know who will be front and center in it.
“Prince Lestat: The Vampire Chronicles” (Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 2014, 458 pages) reintroduces the rockstar Brat Prince of the blood drinkers, the former French aristocrat who became an icon for his hidden race.
“Prince Lestat” acknowledges it has a lot of ground to cover. It begins with a recap and a lexicon for the previous books. Then it shows the vampires thrown into the 21st century, dealing with the Internet and social media.
One vampire named Benji runs a vampire pirate radio station in New York, reaching out to his kind all over the world. But his kind is now in grave danger.
Something is slaughtering vampires around the world, burning them and their sanctuaries to the ground. The vampires keep hearing what they call The Voice, which drives them into killing their own.
In this fray emerges Lestat, who has survived through his centuries of un-life. He plunges into a pursuit of The Voice. Meantime, “Prince Lestat” is suddenly full of vampires, both the familiar and the relatively unknown.
Rice spends most of “Prince Lestat” visiting each vampire who has appeared in her books, as well as fleshing out newer characters who have only appeared in bit roles or stayed in the background.
In the process, she shows us how wide and diverse vampire society is; how they are coping with the modern world; and how they are endangered by The Voice’s machinations.
Essential reintroduction
Deep into its third act, “Prince Lestat” gets busy really quickly. The vampires gather in New York to deal with The Voice, and a reluctant Lestat is pressured into assuming leadership of the vampires. Will he accept? What wull they do? Who is The Voice?
Violently and definitively, Rice shows the consequences, changing the landscape of her vampire world forever. She doesn’t hold back narratively, and, prose-wise, this is the Anne Rice her fans adore, with her ornate, lush prose and grand dialogue. It’s really her.
And what a reintroduction “Prince Lestat” is for the people of the Savage Garden (this is how Rice describes their world).
By novel’s end, it’s clear that “Prince Lestat” is a beginning to a new chapter of The Vampire Chronicles, not the end (the sequel, tentatively titled “Blood Paradise,” is supposed to come out next year). Readers new to the books will benefit from the additional material at the end of “Prince Lestat,” which includes a rundown of the individual vampires and an appendix featuring the 12 previous Vampire Chronicles titles.
What Rice has done is to essentially re-start her Vampire Chronicles for a new generation of readers, while serving her loyal following faithfully. No small task, but an especially treacherous one for an author who hasn’t bared her fangs in 11 years.
But with the bloody good “Prince Lestat,” Anne Rice has truly returned to what made her different—and formidable. Welcome back to the dark side!
Available in hardcover from National Book Store.