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Summary and Reviews of The Vampire Armand by Anne Rice

The Vampire Armand by Anne Rice

The Vampire Armand

The Vampire Chronicles

by Anne Rice
  • Critics' Consensus:
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  • First Published:
  • Oct 1, 1998, 387 pages
  • Paperback:
  • Sep 1999, 397 pages
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About This Book

Book Summary

The story of Armand - eternally young, with the face of a Botticelli angel, who first appeared in all his dark glory more than twenty years ago in the now-classic Interview with the Vampire,

In the latest installment of The Vampire Chronicles, Anne Rice summons up dazzling worlds to bring us the story of Armand - eternally young, with the face of a Botticelli angel. Armand, who first appeared in all his dark glory more than twenty years ago in the now-classic Interview with the Vampire, the first of The Vampire Chronicles, the novel that established its author worldwide as a magnificent storyteller and creator of magical realms.

Now, we go with Armand across the centuries to the Kiev Rus of his boyhood--a ruined city under Mongol dominion--and to ancient Constantinople, where Tartar raiders sell him into slavery. And in a magnificent palazzo in the Venice of the Renaissance we see him emotionally and intellectually in thrall to the great vampire Marius, who masquerades among humankind as a mysterious, reclusive painter and who will bestow upon Armand the gift of vampiric blood.

As the novel races to its climax, moving through scenes of luxury and elegance, of ambush, fire, and devil worship to nineteenth-century Paris and today's New Orleans, we see its eternally vulnerable and romantic hero forced to choose between his twilight immortality and the salvation of his immortal soul.

Excerpt
The Vampire Armand

If I had thought my transformation into a vampire meant the end of my tutelage or apprenticeship to Marius, I was quite wrong. I wasn't immediately set free to wallow in the joys of my new powers.

The night after my metamorphosis, my education began in earnest. I was to be prepared now not for a temporal life but for eternity.

My Master gave me to know that he had been created a vampire almost fifteen hundred years ago, and that there were members of our kind all over the world. Secretive, suspicious and often miserably lonely, the wanderers of the night, as my Master called them, were often ill prepared for immortality and made nothing of their existence but a string of dreary disasters until despair consumed them and they immolated themselves through some ghastly bonfire, or by going into the light of the sun.

As for the very old, those who like my Master had managed to withstand the passage of empires and epochs, they were for the most part...

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Reviews

Media Reviews

The New York Times Book Review
. .[T]he end of this uneven but enjoyable story is surely only the prelude to another. Stay tuned.

Booklist - Kathleen Hughes
Rice returns to the gothic simplicity of Interview with a Vampire in her latest Vampire Chronicles installment. An especially memorable figure from Interview, the eternally young and beautiful Armand, here tells the tale of his long, tortured life.....As always, Rice paints a fascinating and dazzling historical tapestry, providing a beautifully written and incredibly absorbing tale. Documenting the eternal struggle between man and God, and faith and despair, this novel for the most part stays away from the sf-fantasy tone of recent Rice works.

Publishers Weekly
Fantasy's great advantage is that authors can make anything happen even rewriting their own stories, as Rice does here. Readers of her 1995 novel, Memnoch the Devil, will recall that the vampire Armand ended his existence by stepping into the sun. Since he was a popular character from earlier tales, a resounding protest from fans followed. In response, Rice concocted a way in this, her seventh Vampire Chronicle since Interview with the Vampire<.i> (1976), to raise Armand from the dead. He is, in fact, the narrator of this story, in which he looks back on his earthly existence.

Reader Reviews

noor

breath-taking
"The Vampire Armand" is my absolute favorite Anne Rice book. It is simply magical, touching, exciting, deep, wise, unforgettable. You can't help but fall in love with Armand, the forever young, beautiful and tragic hero of the story. Armand and his ...   Read More
Larious Valarian Zineheart

Greetings friends, i adore the books by Madam Ann Rice they are wonderfully detailed, the pictures that form in your head are amazing. keep up the good work my lady you are adored by many even the true damned ones like my self. V
Julieta

Well it's simply excellent. I would say it's my favourite one but there is Armand in Lestat too, and being the "bad guy" to make it better, so it's difficult to say. I like Anne Rice focusing in a specific moment, telling a single story and...   Read More
Serenity Spencer

This has to be my favorite book out of the Vampire Chronicles. Armand's struggle is a harsh one, but shows the trued light on him and his ways.

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