I didn't want to put this in the book item because it would cause major
drift. 

Can anyone tell me what all the fuss about Anne Rice is? Her books wind up as
best-sellers but Rice suffers from the idea-writer's syndrome - she has som
really good ideas but very, very poor execution. I read the vampire books
solely because everyone kept saying how good *Queen of the Damned* is and
you had to read the first two books to understand it.

I suffered terribly through *Interview with a Vampire.* I held my breath
and plunged through *The Vampire Lestat.* *Queen of the Damned* was definite-
ly not worth the torture.

Rice's characters are stereotyped stick figures of homosexuals (notice how
all her male vampires are gay?). Lestat loved only his mother. Louis was a
fairy. Marius liked little boys. Armand was the sensual, seductive teen-
ager. Nicholas was the sensitive artist.

I couldn't find much of a plot thread, either. Were we supposed to wonder
who They Who Must Be Kept are? I didn't really care. Or was Lestat supposed
to come to grips with himself as a vampire? He did it awfully quickly.

If you read and enjoyed the vampire books, why? What did you like? Why does
everyone call them so wonderful?

(Oh, yeah - her husband's poetry sucks pondwater. I'm willing to bet she
uses it in her novels because it won't get published anywhere else.)

47 responses total.

  I never quite got the point, either, but then I couldn't even force 
myself through "Interview With a Vampire" to make it to "The Vampire
Lestat" (which was the one everyone was gushing over at the time, since
"Queen of the Damned" wasn't around yet.)  It's always puzzled me since
I read it on the recommendation of more than one friend with otherwise
decent taste in books.  It must be a completely hit or miss thing.

+Who+ said _Queen_ was good?  It was the worst book of the three.  +Lestat+
was the best one, actually.
  
I didn't get the idea that the vampires were stereotyped homosexuals.  
They weren't exceptionally into sex at any rate.  It seemed that there
(sorry, their) attraction to children was more narcissistic than sexual.

I haven't read them sorry.  A series of vampire books I really like
is Chelsie Quinn Yarborough's St. Germain stories.  They are
interesting, well written and historically accurate.  Also St. Germain
is wonderfully charming and sexy as vampires go. ;-)

Another one that I have enjoyed a lot was Barbara Hambly's book
_Those Who Hunt The Night_.  It's got an interesting principle on
Vampirism in it.

I'm not too crazy about the books, myself, and I would even disagree that
she has some really good ideas.  Rice is so popular that she has taken to
writing what the public wants to hear and not what she wants to write.

Didn't like "Interview...".  I thought I must have been in a bad mood
because of all these other people that liked it.  Read "Lestat" and
disliked that as well.  Never will read "Queen..." or any other Rice
book now.

Her B&D novels (written under A.N. Roquelare) were OK; much different
tone and writing style than the vampire books.  _The Feast of All
Saints_ isn't bad either.

This response has been erased.

 There might be..  I was never able to finish a Thomas Covenant book
either.  I think that was just because Donaldson's writing was dull.
But that's flame bait for another item..

Huh.  I read (and enjoyed) *both* Thomas Covenant series.  One bad data
point for your correlation, Val...

(that's ok, he's on the outside edge of the spread..  you can discard him.)

Steve Maser or Steve Donaldson?
I liked the Covenant books okay. 
Can't imagine I'd be able to stand the Rice books. I think I browsed one and
said "Ugh".

Skip _Lord Foul's Bane_ and the other Covenant books are OK. 
  
I don't remember the titles of her 'erotic' novels..._Beauty's Punishment_
was one, I think.  They were OK if you like that sort of thing.

   Hmmm. I didn't like the Thos. Covenant (I read through two and
a half volumes of self-pitying whining, and got disgusted), and
I wasn't very impressed with Anne Rice's vampires.  I think I
see why some nihilists might like them, though.

 Rice also wrote some books under the name "Anne Rampling".  I don't know
if they're any good, but I tend to doubt it because they suffer from Bachman's
Syndrome.  (popular author has old book, written under another name, that 
doesn't sell until it's re-released with their name on it, presumably because
it's as bad as or worse than their other work...) ("Richard Bachman" is a 
Stephen King pseudonym.)

The only Vampire book I've read was "Dracula"

   I decided to pick up the Mordant's Need series, in spite of
my dislike of Thos. Covenant. And I actually enjoyed them, although
I figured out why I hated that series -- the protagonists are
drifting through the adventure.  It was bad enough for the first
book of Mordant's Need, and the protagonist wasn't nearly as
repulsive.

Well, the protagonist was a borderline schizophrenic--it's not surprising
that reading THE MIRROR OF HER DREAMS makes you want to jump up and down
on the book and scream "Get your brain out of your nipples, bitch!"

   I've just finished all three of Rice's vampire books; Glenda was right
behind me, and Marcus just got them from us.  Perhaps its time to resurect
the discussion.  I didn't quite agree with some of the earlier comments, and
not that they're fresh in my head, I'll put something in a bit later.   But
let me say now that I think they are an incredible peice of work:  she has
redefined the concept of vampire, for my way of thinking.  After I download
the earlier stuff I can respond to it...

It's been a while since I read them, but I liked them, too.

I just finished +Cry to Heaven+, an interesting book about castrati.  Not
bad, though I thought it was a little thin and left a number of characters
very two-dimensional.  +The Feast of All Saints+ was much better.

Who was the author of the book on castrati, Laurel?

Anne Rice.

reponse to # 8 & 9 and a couple others
the t covenant unbelieverw were whiners and i read both sets, but lost interst
in the 2nd set, but i do wear a white gold ring and had my fingers amputated   
just for fun.  ann rice had a good book i liked, never read the vampires but
did like the       witching hour, now maybe i'll move to new orleans, and
vampires are cool if you can get past blood breath.  how about the new batman
comic "red rain" batman vs drac. guess who can't stand light of day in the end,
but like they say not all vampires are bad

I was in websters book store just the other day.

They had this interesting sign up it said ....

           "Halloween Day
            Ann Rice        "


I wonder what it means ??????????

Probably the release of her next vampire book.  The others have been released
on Halloween.  STeve is, impatiently, waiting.

     I liked the first two books.  I suspect it's a matter of
personal taste, but I loved her writing.  The third book was a
terrible disappointment to me, as it lost focus, and the ending just plain
sucked dead wambat's colons.

Fans of Anne Rice can now check out the newsgroup alt.books.anne-rice.

Well, I am almost finished reading _Tale of the Body Thief_, another 
LeStat vampire book, and I still like them.  I guess you either like
them or don't, depending on how much you swallow the premises of the
books.  For me, they're more believable than "fantasy" novels.

The porn novels had pretty good "good bits", but
the whole image of a sex-factory got boring after a while.

The only other thing I've read by her was an abortive attempt at RAMSES
THE DAMNED; I just couldn't stomach the writing.

Incidentally, I liked the Thomas Covenant series.

You know, I read a lot of Anne Rice, and I felt the same way about
_Ramses_.  What a load of garbage!  It's like she wrote over a long 
weekend...  Anne Rice is definitely the higher end of "popular" novels
these days, and I enjoy reading them.  I call them "Mind Candy" - no
substance, but oh, so tasty.  For substance I go for Paul Auster.

In response to #24 if you liked the Witching Hour you need to read
Lasher which is the sequel.

perhaps these books don't appeal to anyone unless they are into vampires,
like me.

I think that would be quite a generalization, Gerald...
 
I didn't get "into" vampires until reading Anne Rice's books.

true... a generalization, i think what i meant was vampire interested
people's are likely to like the books more than others.

The vampires I appreciate are the tropical blood feeding bats. Are the
vampires in these stories the Bela Lugosi variety, or something else?

I like to think of them more as the "dark angel" sort: beautiful shining,
intelligent, feeling, but also inherently dangerous , unpredicatable,
powerful, and deadly.  Not to mention having a nature inherently destructive
to regular people.
 
Rice has bult up quite a background for her vampires, both individually and
as a "race" (not quite the term I'm looking for).  She uses them to
explore questions about morals, relationships (including nontraditional ones)
and families.

re #36:  They are more the lugosi variety than the tropical variety,
but they are much more intriguing than the vampires you sormally
see in the movies.

Enough people raved about Rice's vampire books that I sat down with
"Interview"-- 120 pages later I punted.  What an uninteresting load
of crap.  This pissed me off because I was in the mood for a good,
scary read.  I'm further annoyed because she is turning up in way
too many magazines and TV shows for my taste.  :-(

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