The Vampire Armand
   Anne Rice
  1998 Alfred A. Knopf NY USA
   ISBN: 0679454470


Armand's story takes us across the centuries from his Russian boyhood under Mongol rule to his initiation under the Great Marius.

Reading an Anne Rice book is like stroking a vast brocade curtain, or viewing a Breughel painting or a Renaissance tapestry. Scenes within scenes, seamless world and time travel, wave after wave of passion and devastation interspersed with lulls of seemingly pure relief and acute remorse only to build up again as the hunger for the blood returns.

Anne Rice's writing seems to be revealed rather than constructed. I've been entranced, absorbed, waylaid, obsessed and fascinated with her chronicles. Before I ever read Interview with the Vampire, it had been rabidly popular and I'd heard people refer to this little book as they had once spoken of Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land. Eventually I did read the Interview and was surprised and amazed if a tad nervous. Such scenes! Such ideas! Lifetimes of apparent depravity presented by such a reluctant participant, by such a master!

It's as if Anne Rice has taken up a dictionary and held it to a mirror wherein we read the reverse to all the words by which we make our world safe. It's as if these chronicles are there to stretch our credulity, to exercise our flabby moralities, to show us the gutter over which we might step. I love an Anne Rice read, she makes you think, makes you wonder, makes you pause and The Vampire Armand is total immersion and profound in its jousting between evil and good, shadow and light...

“...You are kept alive by blood that is cursed and unnatural and pleasing to Satan, and pleasing to God only because He must have Satan to show forth His goodness, and to give mankind a choice to be good or bad.”

Anne Rice takes you to places and times you never thought to visit as Armand, sets out to plead for understanding, forgiveness and redemption. A delectable read!
(04/12/99)

Rebecca