Anne Rice books

Grim/Don

Grim/Don

Joined
Feb 1, 2003
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I was at the library looking for vampire books (Just finished Midnight Mass by F. Paul Wilson :thumbup: ) and I remembered that Anne Rice is supposed to be THE vampire writer. They didn't have Interview with a Vampire locally, so I placed a hold on it. I did pick up The Feast of All Saints... Whew... Read the first 10 pages, then skimmed 20-30 more... wow... I thought Stephen King could be wordy. (Salem's Lot is another good story) I culdn't read anymore of it.

Are all of Rice's books written that way? If so, I'll have to pass on them. Are there any other good vampire books I should check out. (I've read Vampries by John Steakley, which is also excellent.)
 
check out brian lumley he has a whole series that i really like
it is pretty twisted though
 
buckman#10 said:
check out brian lumley he has a whole series that i really like
it is pretty twisted though
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Two thumbs up for Brian Lumley. I wouldn't say it's twisted, it's just a littile more in-depth than youre main stream anne rice style family friendy bloodsucker. as in it's not family friendly, at all.

yeah now that I think about it it is pretty twisted. but good.
 
oh yea i liked it and i wish they would make some movies of them even when they screwed it up it would still be good i think
 
buckman#10 said:
oh yea i liked it and i wish they would make some movies of them even when they screwed it up it would still be good i think
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Yeah, they would have to screw it up. if they didn't nobody would screen it. and it would have an effects budget bigger than the titanic.
 
Gene Wolf has a couple of vampire series I enjoyed.

S. P. Somtow and Fred Saberhagen also.

These are vampire "lite" in nature, though.
 
To get back to the original question....YES! I have read a ton of her books and some of them are just yak, yak, yak. Either speaking or in the character's mind, it just keeps on going.
 
Rice is very hit and miss. Interview with the Vampire was good, but I couldn't get through 20 pages of worthless internal monologue in The Vampire Lestat. One of her more recent books was quite good though, but I can't remember the title right now. I'll look for it later.
 
I had much the same experience, "Interview" was quite good, then she kind of got carried away. I enjoyed "The Devil Memnoch" (I think that's the right title) because it has Lestat being courted by both sides, the good and the evil. He handles the situation in typical Lestat fashion...

For those into erotica, there's here pseudonymous "Sleeping Beauty" series....
 
"Bloodsucking Fiends" by Christopher Moore is a vampire story written from a different point of view. I thought it was hilarious. Nice for a change of pace.
 
I was reluctant to read a vampire book because it's really not the stuff that usually interests me. However, after seeing the Interview with the Vampire movie, I decided to read the book. I was suprised to find that I couldn't put it down. I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Next in the series is The Vampire Lestat. I thought that was even better than the first book, very exciting.

The third book, The Queen of the Damned was kind of a disappointment. There were some good parts, but the overall theme got to be annoying.

The fourth book, The Tale of the Body Thief, was better than the Queen of the Damned ,but not great.

The fifth book, Memmoch the Devil was interesting but did drone on in places.

After reading those, I lost interest in the series. I would highly recommend the first two books, but the others I could take or leave.
 
If you like vampire stories, my favorites are the "Old Friend of the Family" series by Fred Saberhagen. These are stories with Vlad Dracula as the hero. You may remember the film by Francis Ford Coppola a few years back, "Dracula," that portrayed him as a Medieval warlord turned vampire by anger over the loss of his beloved wife. Well, Saberhagen had been one of the original authors of the screenplay and this is largely his take on Vlad Dracula. He takes the historical character and has him being assassinated by some of his old allies. The fury over this betrayal turns him into a vampire, but he is not an evil creature. He is still the Medieval warlord with the sense of duty and honor that would go with such a person, as well as the anger at enemies and betrayers that would also be a part of such a man. THe family of which he is an "Old Friend" are the descendants of Mina and John Harker. Mina was his only true love and, when she had been old and about to die, he had promised to look after her family. His word is his bond.

Not all of the stories deal with her family, however. THe first one, The Dracula Tape tells his side of the Bram Stoker novel and it is rather humorous as well as a ripping good tale. There are also a couple of Sherlockian pastisches, one of which, The Holmes-Dracula File is particular fun. There are also some that tell stories of Vlad, himself, through history.

All told, this is a very well-done series by a famous s-f author of the Berserker series, yet another group well worth reading. In that series, you will find the roots of "Battlestar Galactica".
 
I've seen Interview with the Vampire, read the Vampire Lestat, Talos, Memnoch the Devil, and a recent one about a Roman vampire that protected the Queen of the Damned. I couldn't finish that one. Lestat was okay, it dragged a lot in parts. Memnoch was boring at first, but lost steam towards the end. Talos, I think I'm spelling that right, was a witch book, but I didn't care for it. I liked the Interview movie, but it wasn't great. She's entertaining, but not my favorite author. Also, I'm more of a werewolf fan than a vampire fan.

That said, I've read a few other vampire movies. They were either too Underworld like to the point of being so corny you couldn't dispel belief, to the other spectrum where they were probably written by a depressed emo punk, like theres any other kind.
 
Tiewas said:
Any good werewolf books out there? Sorry for OT.
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The Jim Butcher authored Harry Desden series book #2 Fool Moon features a werewolf story. Its mindless fluff but a fun read.

The Kelly Armstrong book Bitten is well written with good character development but otherwise a soulless boring story. Your milage may vary if you decide to read it. I can't recommend it.
 
Tiewas said:
Any good werewolf books out there? Sorry for OT.
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Actually, Alice Borchardt, Anne Rice's sister, has written a series on werewoves that is quite good, and I am not fond of Anne Rice. They are, in order of publication, The Silver Wolf, The Night of the Wolf, and The Wolf King. The main character also is appearing in her take on Guinevere. The two books so far are The Dragon Queen and [/i]The Raven Warrior[/i], both pretty good but not as good as the first three.

There is also a series of Southern red-neck vampire tales by Charlaine Harris that also include what she calls "weres", shape changers of all varieties. These are very funny stories, intended to be that way, but also very sympathetic to the culture of which she is writing. She is NOT condescending in the least about it. Probably the best that I have read to date is Club Dead, but it is not the first. That is Dead Until Dark, followed by Living Dead In Dallas, Club Dead, Dead To The World, Dead As A Doornail, and Definitely Dead. As I said, these are written very tongue-in-cheek and are more fun than a barrel of monkies. She also takes a few swipes at the snobbish vampires in New Orleans. Her vampires live upstate in Louisiana.
 
FullerH said:
If you like vampire stories, my favorites are the "Old Friend of the Family" series by Fred Saberhagen. These are stories with Vlad Dracula as the hero. You may remember the film by Francis Ford Coppola a few years back, "Dracula," that portrayed him as a Medieval warlord turned vampire by anger over the loss of his beloved wife. Well, Saberhagen had been one of the original authors of the screenplay and this is largely his take on Vlad Dracula. He takes the historical character and has him being assassinated by some of his old allies. The fury over this betrayal turns him into a vampire, but he is not an evil creature. He is still the Medieval warlord with the sense of duty and honor that would go with such a person, as well as the anger at enemies and betrayers that would also be a part of such a man. THe family of which he is an "Old Friend" are the descendants of Mina and John Harker. Mina was his only true love and, when she had been old and about to die, he had promised to look after her family. His word is his bond.

Not all of the stories deal with her family, however. THe first one, The Dracula Tape tells his side of the Bram Stoker novel and it is rather humorous as well as a ripping good tale. There are also a couple of Sherlockian pastisches, one of which, The Holmes-Dracula File is particular fun. There are also some that tell stories of Vlad, himself, through history.

All told, this is a very well-done series by a famous s-f author of the Berserker series, yet another group well worth reading. In that series, you will find the roots of "Battlestar Galactica".
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He also wrote the "Book of Swords" series a jaunt into the fantasy (i.e. swords and sorcery) genre. If you have not read it I highly recommend it. I did not realize he had written the Berserker series although I think I have read some short stories from it. Were the Berserkers machines that were trying to kill off humanity?
 
The Berserkers were machines created in an ancient war somewhere in a distant galaxy. One race designed a machine to hunt out and to kill the other side. The problem was that they did not build in an adequate filter, so the machines began to hunt all biological, as opposed to machine, life so tha they could kill it. The Berserkers wiped out both sides in that ancient war and then moved on to seek out other biological infestations to destroy. These Berserker machines make even the new Cylons look like playful kittens, let alone the inept ones in the original show. Also, when I first saw "Star Wars", I knew immediately where they had gotten the idea for the Death Star. It was a Berserker, but run by people. The machine cubes in Star Trek: TNG were also offspring of the Berserker machines. My favorite of all of the Berserker stories is the short story, "Wings Out of Shadow."
 
There's a wonderful old sci-fi Werewolf novel, The Compleat Werewolf by Anthony Boucher. A fellow discovers that he's afflicted with lycanthropy, which causes him no end of trouble until he becomes a movie star as a Rin-Tin-Tin-type pooch.... Great fun.
 
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