Vampire Lestat

“And after all, I had never been very good at obeying rules.”
The Vampire Lestat's story goes throughout the centuries, as Lestat meets other vampires who tell their tales. This book takes back to Ancient Egyptian times, to classical Rome, to pagan Europe, to the times of the French Revolution and back up to the present time. It follows Lestat's journey to find the truth. The truth that Louis was always searching for, but never found.
The entire story is fascinating and spans centuries as Lestat grows from a fledgling, angry and lonely vampire into carefree one he is upon setting foot on a San Francisco stage to perform his first rock concert in front of thousands of screaming fans.
Lestat is the tragic hero; he gets a chance to tell his own story, and it shows that he has suffered even more than Louis and that he is not a villain. It is explained why Lestat is the way he is and why he does the things he does which is genuinely interesting. This book tells how different Lestat is from what is depicted in Interview with the Vampire, from what is shown through Louis's eyes. The glimpses of Lestat told 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, for which the reasons are shown only in this book, 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 these things are hints at the depth and complexity of the character of Lestat.
More is shown some of the characters that were met in Interview with the Vampire, giving depth, backstories and reasons to them and their actions.
In The Vampire Lestat, finally the entire picture is shown, and the masterpiece of a character of Lestat is fully laid bare. The depth and the multi-dimensionality, and the humanity of Lestat. It is impossible to not like Lestat even more after seeing 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.
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“This is the only sun that you will ever see again. But a millennium of nights will be yours to see light as no mortal has ever seen it, to snatch from the distant stars as if you were Prometheus an endless illumination by which to understand all things.”