It is my suggestion that, if you want to sample Anne Rice, and have never read any of her other works, this may be the book you want to read instead of her most famous novel, "Interview with a Vampire." let me explain.
"The Vampire Lestat" is quite a different novel from the first in the series, because we are dealing with an entirely different vampire than the depressed and vulnerable Louis from Rice's first book. Don't get me wrong, Lestat was the antagonist in Interview but towards the end of the novel you start to think maybe that's not the case. That single thought pushed me to read his story to find out why Lestat was the way he was.

I LOVED learning about where Lestat came from and also finding out about ALL of the ancient vampires, all the way back to the very FIRST vampire. In Lestat's story, the reader goes throughout the centuries, as he meets other vampire's who tell their tales. This book feels like a world tour that goes back to Ancient Egyptian times, to classical Rome, to pagan Europe, to the times of the French Revolution, to an old, decaying (slightly creepy I might add) Parisian cemetery and back up to the present time. It was FUN to follow Lestats journey to find the truth..the same truth that Louis was always searching for, but never found.

The entire story is fascinating and spans centuries as Lestat grows from a fledgling vampire into the emotional, lonely, angry, and finally carefree vampire he is upon setting foot on a San Francisco stage to perform his first rock concert in front of 15,000 screaming fans. (Yes, Lestat is a Rock star in the 1980's in this book! My first thought to that was, "Whatever!" But then it made sense.)

Lestat now gets a chance to tell his OWN story, and it makes us (the reader) realize that he has suffered even more than Louis and shows that he is not a villain; he is the tragic hero of sorts. He is actually far more aware than Louis, something else that Louis doesn't see either. He is a gentle, innocent, thoughtful young man who has suffered so much in his life, and then he is forced into becoming one of the living dead, who now must kill to survive. It is explained to us why Lestat is the way he is and why he does the things he does which is truly interesting.

When you read "Interview with a Vampire" you don't know then that Lestat is misunderstood by Louis, and therefore misunderstood by the reader, whom is seeing the story through Louis' eyes. The glimpses of Lestat we have in Interview with the Vampire, of his relationship with his father, of the way he acts, of his charm that Louis finds both attractive and repulsive, of his love of bright artificial light and his desire to live luxuriously, of his friendship with a young musician, of his doting upon Claudia and showering her with gifts, of his fear to lose Louis, of him emotionally distraught and pleading with Louis to come back to him in Paris (which I didn't understand at the time), and finally of the frail, broken, and pitiful shadow of a man he has become by the end of Louis's story, where Louis finds him again in New Orleans. All of these things are hints at the depth and complexity of the character of Lestat.

In The Vampire Lestat, you will finally see the entire picture, and see the masterpiece of a character that Lestat is. The depth and the multi-dimensionality, and the humanity of Lestat. If you liked Louis before, you will still like him. But you will like Lestat even more because you will see how completely misunderstood he is and learn the story of the pain and sorrow he kept hidden in his heart, hidden underneath that charming facade that Louis encountered on his plantation in 1791. You will start to understand HOW Lestat could act the way he did towards Louis and Claudia which was the answer to the questions I was seeking in this book so I closed the covers of this book satisfied.