Product Description

Set includes: Interview with the Vampire, The Vampire Lestat, The Queen of the Damned, and The Tale of the Body Thief.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1067 in Books
• Published on: 1993-09-01
• Released on: 1993-09-01
• Format: Box set
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 4
• Binding: Paperback

Features

• ISBN13: 9780345385406
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
• Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices

Amazon.com Review
For the first time you can find all your favorite night-stalking, blood-guzzling undead--Lestat, Claudia, Louis, Akasha, Armand, and Memnoch--all in the same place at the same time. Here, collected in one box-set, are the four bestselling, original titles of Anne Rice's sprawling vampire series.

Customer Reviews

Not to be missed by vampire fans!
I think I read Interview with the Vampire a few years ago and just never got around to the Vampire Lesatat and so on. Well, when I ran across this book, I had to get it. And I totally fell in love with Lestat. He's the complete antithesis of Louis! However, both novels are top notch horror/vampire stories and Anne Rice is a masterful story teller. She knows how to write and she knows how to draw her readers in. So, if you purchase this, expect to get drawn in and immediately! Also, the books all stand up by themselves, so if you don't quite feel up to one, you can skip it and go to the other. Overall, this is a fantastic anthology and one not to be missed if you are a fan of vampire fiction! I would also recommend Dead Sexy Vampire Erotica: Two Dark and Thirsty Stories.

Do you really want to live forever?
This is a box set of the first four books of Anne Rice's popular Vampire Chronicles series. Her works are immensely popular and have spawned 1 1/2 movies (calling Queen Of The Damned even half a movie is being extremely generous!) and many many sequels. I picked up this box set after being told by numerous people that the first four were worth reading and I was really pleaseatly surprised. (I've heard that the series really goes downhill fast after the The Tail Of The Body Thief)

The vampires in this universe are elegant beings of the night who are very articulate and this traslates to immense description. This may bother some but once you get used to Rice's style, it could best be described as a dreamy flow of the subconscious and it works well for the series. The books take you all over the USA and much of Europe as well and Rice does a great job of creating these vampires that have very human qualities.

The series mainly centers around the title character Lestat. Lestat is a fascianting study of the flawed uber-vampire who does what he wants and refuses to conform to the vampire "rules". He knows he is not perfect but realizes the only way to live through immortality is to enjoy oneself whenever one can. The supporting cast has their fair share of interesting characters and the personalities of the vampires are really the heart of the series.

A couple of things Rice does makes her vampire world so fascinating. The vampires act as their own little microsociety with rules and taboos that are well thought out and extremely interesting. For example the longer a vampire makes before creating another vampire determines how powerfull that new vampire will be. There are complications to living forever that you never would of thought of. The vampires have no sexual urges but instead the act of bloodletting serves as their mental and physical urge for copulation. Vampires don't marry each other but instead have extremely strong emotional bonds with each other and thier own fledglings (when you create another vampire they become your fledgiling) They stay together for an indefinite period until an unknown force breaks their emotional connection. This makes for some fascinating relationships that almost seem like "couples" but without the physical relationship. These bonds are often between same gender vampires and sometimes include three or four vampires. All these interesting parameters make for an web of relationships that frequently change.

The biggest con of the series is that sometimes the prose drags on forever and certain parts could be shorter. They were all good, but actually I thought the fourth book was the best and it was also the shortest.

Bottom Line: An entertaining series that will be most enjoyed by experienced readers and fans of romantic self indulgent nuerotic blood suckers.

Complete Vampire Chronicles
Good old Anne is a wonderful story teller. Well, not only that, to be fair. The fact that so many people feel enchanted with har characters makes her a good portrayer and critic of society and Christianity. And that is what makes you plough through her books in many ways, you can relate to the different personalities which are introduced and in particular to their dark side.

Her first book, Interview, was a tremendous shock. It's all heart and little explanation. Your feelings run wild with her passionate descriptions and as you enter her barroque world of Vampires you don't worry about the whys or the hows, because what is in front of you is the only thing you can just about handle. Afterwards you begin to ask the questions, and indeed there are many. Overall a terrific formula to open a series- towards the end... Tarantino must have learn something from this.

Now is Lestat's turn. Is he really that demonic, or does he have a heavier burden than he can carry? Well, this has to be the best book. The biography of Rice's darkest secrets. Her fears, dreams and views on many subjects. Her narrative style is superb and the subtleness of her story is very clever. At points in the book you ask yourself; "what the hell does she mean a Vempire is?" Because, indeed many passages can be interpreted very differently, against many social and cultural topics, which to say the least, do not lack in controversy.

After such an imaginative and critical piece of work, the next two books: The Queen and The Body Thief, simply can not compare. They are very different to the first two. Nevertheless a good read in which you are introduced to many characters, in many different stages of history. Story-building books with a gran finale, in which you are not quite sure with whom your feelings are. Rice is very good at that... lots of adventure, mixed with the decadent romanticism her characters transpire.

Finally, Menmoch is the culmination of a job well done. A good finish to the series. Lestat goes out with a bang. Some of her descriptions of hell and heaven I did not like, but that is personal. What is important is her good attempt at explaining the ultimate question: Creation. Very dangereous grounds because it can only be her interpretation of something unexplainable, and sometimes this can be fatally criticised. But, she remains faithfull to her style and perspective (A Christian God)and it works. The ending is unique, you don't see it coming, even after you've read it a few times. This was to a certain extent a similar approach to Scorcese's film The Last temptation... What if Christ didn't know He was the son of God? Well, how about this: What if The Devil was a genuine good guy? Or is he just another piece of the board?