I returned to this book years after I read it. I was a child then, and it let me in. I was both repulsed by and intrigued by the setting and characterization: after all, I was a young man who still listened to nu-metal and was expecting more fighting, more vampiric battles, and the like.

But coming back to it with a more mature perspective, I can't help but appreciate it for all new reasons. Lestat no longer seems as heroic to me, but actually more human; his struggles are really what we all struggle for, a grasping for some meaning in a life that no one is entirely sure has one. The fact that he becomes immortal and rich only play into the fetishistic way we want to suffer. But even that - the pull between worldly comfort and otherworldly pain and pleasure, is really represented. The way he feels about the important vampires in his life, to his desire to show the world who and what he is -

It's an important book.

I hesitated for a moment about giving it four or five stars; more honestly, I'd have given it four and a half. Interview with the Vampire is a better "novel" by all accounts; it follows a tighter plot, a more poignant message, and the writing, though deliberately anachronistic, is almost eerily poetic. The Vampire Lestat is as much a sequel as it is a solid book, which is both its strength and downfall. Readers of IwtV will delight in reading Lestat's musings on the period they had read about from his point of view, but the real crux of the novel is its new content, telling a slightly less "absurdist" point of view as its predecessor, with a more proactive and animated hero. If Louis is the character that we all can secretly relate to in the depths of our minds late at night, Lestat is how we envision we ought to "embrace" the world.

There's a few minor annoyances. The pacing is more solid than her later fare but still a little off at times. There's a couple of times that the character "retcons" the original content (what happened to "the musician" from Interview? what happened to the final scene from Interview? does growing older make a vampire more susceptible to sunlight or less?) and a few bizarre moments (the reason, Lestat claims, he didn't call for Marius' help throughout the vast majority of the his lifespan is "pride", which is a hand wave, to be sure).

But fans will like this, not despite the mess, but even because of it.

It's definitely not for everyone, but going into the book with an open mind and a lot of empathy, and you can find yourself aligned with the hero rather easily. Higher quality read than most paperback fiction.