Customer Reviews
One of the best books I have read - By: S. Lockett, 23 Sep 2008 
This book was amazing. I loved everything about it, how Anne Rice writes, how the characters develop & Louis is just so nice! For a vampire.
I had seen the movie before I read this book, but the movie is nothing compared to the book. You actually feel as if you are going through Louis life with him as its so detailed. I am now reading the sequel The Vampire Lestat, & would highly recomend that book also, as you will see why Lestat is the way he isin 'Interview'.
But would def read this again & recomend anyone to read this, not just vampire lovers.
Louis! Louis! - By: G. Dalessandro, 28 Jun 2008 I can't express how much I loved this book! I felt that Louis & Lestat were incredible characters. The emotionin this book is breathtaking & I am just about to start the next one. I will definitely be recommending this book to anyone who hasn't read it. 5 stars!
How I hate this book - By: Nightlover, 27 May 2008 
I started this bookin the early 90's & didn't get more than three or four chaptersin before I gave up. I found it at the back of a cupboard & decided to give it another go. I still hated it, found it very dry & boring. I was determined though that this time it would not beat me & I would finish it. It took me two weeks but I made myself get to the end, I was so happy when it was over.
I will never read this book again.
ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS I'VE EVER READ - By: stuart, 02 Apr 2008 I was always curious about the Vampire Chronicles set of books for years but never actually picked one up & read it. I had seen the films - Interview With The Vampire & Queen Of The Damned, which I had enjoyed.
Well when I saw Interview With The Vampirein a charity shop I had to buy it there & then. On the plus side they where selling it cheap which added to the buy on impulse.
This first novelin The Vampire Chronicles centers around four very different yet almost equally fascinating vampires. The story is that of Louis, a wealthy eighteenth century Louisiana plantation owner who became a vampirein the depths of his despair over his brother's suicide. Lestat, the inscrutable force that hovers above every page of the tale, made Louis a vampire for basically economic reasons; he wanted the wealth that Louis possessed, but he also wanted a companion. Narcissistic & vain, the dapper Lestat does not teach his creation what it means to be a vampire, does not share the secrets he claims to know, does not even help Louis through the soul-shattering change that comes about when the body dies so that it may live eternally. Louis stays with Lestat only because, so far as he knows, there are no other vampires to whom he can turn for help & instruction. His distaste for Lestat grows over the years, however, &in order to keep Louis by his side, Lestat takes a young girl whom Louis had fed upon during a period of emotional turbulence & makes of her a vampire, knowing that Louis could never abandon the child. It is the story of Claudia, doomed to a most tragic life of immortality trapped inside the body of a little girl, that makes this book so powerfulin my eyes. Lestat is of course fascinating, Louis is the epitome of tragedy & a fountain of knowledge by way of his questioning, eternally sad nature, but Claudia's story is an unbearably exquisite one. She accepts her vampire nature with some ease, being too young to really ever remember her human childhood, but the growth of Claudia the vampire woman inside the body of Claudia the child is a beautifully painful thing to watch. When she manages to separate Louis & herself from Lestat to go searching for other vampiresin Central Europe & eventually Paris, giving dramatic voice to both her love for & hatred of Louis, the door to the dungeons of utter tragedy are thrown asunder. The introduction of the four hundred year old vampire Armandin the second half of the book gives us yet another unique vampire soul to ponder, but Armand at his most vivid palesin comparison to Claudia at her most unprepossessing.
In the end, we are left with Louis & his story, which is full of unanswerable questions. Even the meaning & lesson he tries to express about his miserable existence utterly failin their influence it has upon the boy chosen to hear his extraordinary story. Literature really provides no better character study of the emotional meaning of vampirism than Louis, however. He became a creature of the night only out of despair, & his development as a new creature on earth proceeded without any instruction whatsoever from the cold Lestat. Thus, he questions everything about his new nature, desperately longing for a mentor. He does not relish the taking of human life, & the thought of creating another creature like himself is anathema to him. He sees vampirism as a curse, eternally wondering if he is indeed a child of Satan doomed to an immortal yet cursed life. The source of his moral suffering is his inability to really give up his human nature, & this causes him a long, long life of torment & pain. Never before had the moral, spiritual, & philosophical nature of the vampire been exploredin such depth as that foundin this exquisitely beautiful novel, & that is one of the primary reasons why it rivals Stokerin terms of its beauty & resonates with an emotionally hypnotic power that is unmatchedin the long tradition of vampire literature.
I know it doesn't sound exciting but it's one hell of a read & because of this book I have become a huge fan & decided to look for & buy the rest. Anne said "it originally started as a short story & I just built upon it & it became a novel which got published" *
These vampires are not the cold hearted killing machines (well Lestat is) that we are used to seeingin films & magazines, these vampires have emotional feeling & Louis is constantly battling with what he has become & his longing for others which are like him upon which he begins a search for them. This book is breath taking & I found it hard to put it down for the night for me to sleep. I would recommend you pick yourself a copy up & see what all the hype is about.
I saw the sequel to it named The Vampire Lestatin a charity shop the week later so I bought that too.
I enjoyed the film but I foundin the film with timing restrains they had left a lot out that isin the book so I found the book a lot better then the film - & the screenplay was written by Anne Rice too.
So please pick yourself up a copy & begin to read one of the greatest books ever written & hopefully you will find yourself enjoying it then looking for the rest like I did.
Thank you for reading my review
(* is a quote I took from an interview Anne Rice had about Interview With The Vampire on the special features on the Interview With The Vampire film dvd)
Disappointing - By: J. Dicker, 14 Jan 2008 
After reading the rave reviews on this site, I feel compelled to disagree with its superfluous praise.
I concede that this is an important vampire book & that the movie was absolutely brilliant, butin no way is the book superior to the movie. Anne Rice's tone is dull & monotonous to the point of banality. Overall, I found it painfully boring after watching the movie. Even the movie had a better ending than the book.
Serious readers of fiction won't be impressed with this book, & should rather read the classic, Dracula, for those interestedin vampires.
