The Vampire Armand (The Vampire Chronicles) Book 6

I had purchased this book a couple times online and the quality of the books were very poor. I was extremely happy when I opened the package and the book look like it was brand new!!! Another piece to my collection completed.

Anne Rice turned from Atheism to Christianity around the time she wrote this book I believe (wiki it), and it's almost like she's infusing her own shift of belief into some of the vampires. Now, Armand was always depicted as religious, but there are some things revealed at the end of the book that just seem a little too far fetched. It's almost as if she's gonna end up having all her vampires turn into Christians, all in an extremely short amount of time (for the old vampires) that's taken place since Lestat's experience with Memnoch.

I may be exaggerating a little, or my views may be without merit, but the shift from her "savage garden" atheistic stance to this faith and Jesus garbage just isn't creative and I think ruins the books.

These are her stories and she can make whatever revelations come to pass that she likes. But that doesn't mean her books are still good and it's more like she's turning senile and her writing is degrading.

D:

I have read all of The Vampire Chronicles over at least 20 times and I love each and every one of them, but while Lestat is my favorite character this particular book of Armand's life story is my absolute favorite. I love how after reading this book all the gaps that you may have had about Armand finally get filed in. After reading this book I finally understood him. It is like Anne put's her all in each and every one of her characters and Armand is no exception. He is by far the most complex of all her chronicle vampires and you see that in this book. I love how in this book you get to see a tender side to Armand that you really don't get to see much. You get to see the change he made from Amadeo to Armand. This story is just amazing. Also Anne's attention to detail is magnificent. She treats every detail like it is the key to all understanding and I admire that. I also admire her attention to historic details. I love how in her chronicles she always intertwined her fiction and the lives or her vampires with historic places and events. It is very thought provoking. Overall I love how while reading this you can feel every emotion that Armand felt. When he is happy you feel his happiness and when he is sad you feel and understand it all. Out of all the chronicles though this book is the one that I literally get engrossed in to the point that it is like I am not merely reading it, but I am there. I get so sucked into his story that it is like I am no longer just sitting in my room reading a book, but I am there. This at times makes it difficult, especially when Armand becomes numb, because I feel every emotion he has as if it was my own, but it is worth it because this book is beyond all words. Anne Rice did wonderfully with this book and I would recommend it to anyone who has an imagination.

[This review is by Bruce P. Grether, though my partner's name still appears on this account for some reason!]

It was Marius--when I recently re-read BLOOD AND GOLD--who ushered me back to revisit Armand. THE VAMPIRE ARMAND has always been among my favorites of Anne Rice's Vampire Chronicles, only partly because of its strong homoerotic and bisexual themes. The historical periods and places come vividly alive, and the story deftly weaves strands into all of the other VC novels. As usual, those who may think Anne Rice ever repeated herself with this series are not paying attention. Each of the VCs creates a totally new experience. While sometimes they examine familiar portions of the web of narratives from very different viewpoints, each look yields truly unique aspects of events and characters.

Armand manifests two strong and parallel tendencies of human nature, both as a mortal and as an immortal, which are the desire to belong to someone and depend on them, and the desire to have others belong to you. Neither of these--and of course they most often co-exist to some extent--is necessarily perverse in any way; however, such needs always amplify the bitter-sweetness of both human and vampire existence. The bitterness includes rejection, betrayal and terrible loss. The sweetness may seem to make existence worthwhile, yet it can also evaporate at any moment.

Though I appreciate the performance of Antonio Banderas as Armand in the film INTERVIEW WITH THE VAMPIRE his appearance was not quite right for me. I prefer how Armand appears in the novels: an eternally beautiful teenager with flowing red curls. His angelic appearance belies the fact he can suddenly become the Angel of Death. Yet I always sense a deep inner core of Armand that not even kidnapping, slavery, prostitution, emotional turmoil, killing, horrific loss and other travails can quite destroy. His Original Innocence seems to survive somewhere beneath any tarnish upon that lovely, ageless exterior, even if it lies buried and he often keeps it well hidden.

Like many other readers I absorbed ARMAND for the first time in 1998 still unsure of when, or even if, our beloved hero Lestat would ever emerge from the comatose state in which he lay since the wild conclusion of MEMNOCH THE DEVIL. (SPOILER ALERT! LOTS OF THEM!) That remarkable adventure left both Lestat and us as readers uncertain whether Memnoch actually was anything like the Christian Devil, or merely some kind of potent spirit playing cat and mouse with him.

However, there was some evidence: the veil Lestat brought back. Lestat claimed it was the actual, original "Veil of Veronica" from the legend of a woman who was said to have wiped the face of Christ on his way to Calvary with her veil, when the cloth received a likeness of his face upon it. Considered a great relic, the fate of the actual veil was unknown for certain in modern times--until (in the VC universe) Lestat brought the veil back from his experience of some kind of "Other Side" or time travel about two millennia into the past.

All this serves as a preamble to Armand consenting to tell his own story to David Talbot, now an immortal and sort of scribe since THE BODY THIEF. While Lestat remains out of it, Armand agrees to David's request. Clearly Armand survived his evident burning in the sunlight at the end of MEMNOCH, when he went to view the veil on public display. We learn that he was badly burned as he flew up into daylight and tumbled into a building. (Thus the inverto of the original cover art.) Though damaged, Armand managed to telepathically contact a girl and boy named Sybelle and Benji, who rescued him and when he recovered, he had fallen in love with them both.

Armand's journey seems to broadly echo that of Anne Rice herself, from a childhood of faith, young adulthood of questioning and moving away from faith, and an eventual return. ARMAND was published in 1998, the same year Ms. Rice returned to the Catholic Church, and though in 2010 she publicly disavowed Christianity and all organized religion, she retains her own strong personal, private faith.

Long before ARMAND was published, I viewed the VC overall as a journey in the direction of faith--not organized religion--so much as a quest to retrieve the spiritual significance of existence. Armand journeys from icon-painting Eastern Orthodox boy, to become master of his own satanic vampire coven who no longer feels God answers prayers if God exists at all, back to such a shattering return to faith that he feels ready to end his existence--or thinks he is.

Near the end of the novel, Marius asks Armand about his own vision of Christ when he looked at the veil. Armand repudiates all typical religious descriptions of who and what Christ may be. David presses him for more specifics and, Armand says, "He was...my brother. [...] Yes. That is what He was, my brother, and the symbol of all brothers, and that is why He was the Lord, and that is why His core is simply love."

Almost immediately after this scene, some of the contemporary vampires are gathered under the stars, and Armand is adjusting to the fact that Marius gave his mortal children, Benji and Sybelle the Dark Gift against his wishes. Unexpectedly Lestat returns to them, conscious though he seems groggy and still weakened, Sybelle's piano playing has awakened him.

I do not suggest too strong a parallel between ARMAND and the author's own journey away from religion and eventually back to genuine faith, still it's among the greatest themes in existence. This time as I re-read this magnificent novel the return of Lestat seemed to me a kind of resurrection with genuine emotional impact.

I've always felt that a major theme of all the VCs is how, mortal or immortal, we hunger for the warm-hearted companionship of others at least as much as we wish to survive in some form, and Armand exemplifies this in many way. His return to some variety of faith also inspires him to try to have more trust in others, such as David and Marius.

I do love Armand himself, though his role in the destruction of Claudia still troubles me. Now he points me back to Merrick Mayfair. She is the one who eventually, fully awakens Lestat from his hiatus, after Louis attempts to destroy himself over the matter of Claudia, and Lestat must help revive Louis. Ah, what a tangled web!

Thus the next VC for me to revisit is MERRICK.

After a very long hiatus, I recently got back into Anne Rice, having read the first three books of THE VAMPIRE CHORNICLES many years ago. In THE VAMPIRE ARMAND, she takes one of her secondary characters from those books and gives him the center stage, letting him tell his story to the fledging vampire David Talbot in the wake of the events from MEMNOCH THE DEVIL. This book was written back in 1998, after Rice herself had stayed away from her beloved creatures of the night for a few years, but she clearly knew what her fans wanted, and most of all, liked in her fiction, so she went back to dancing with the ones who brought her. Only this dance was not with Lestat, her most famous and popular character, but with Armand, a teenage vampire with the face of an angel. What she was doing was obvious, expanding her vampire universe and seeing if she could do it without relying on, and in the process, exhausting, her most popular character.

How good were the results? I think this book will certainly please die hard Rice fans, for all the stuff she does well in on display here, including her mastery of characterization; her ability to make bygone cultures come to life on her pages, and not only that, but long vanished cities and places return in vivid detail. There are arcs in ARMAND that are Rice the story teller at her best, especially in first half, where Armand narrates how he was kidnapped as a child in medieval Russia and sold into slavery in Constantinople, only to be rescued by the ancient vampire Marius, who was once a Roman senator, and brought to the Venice of the Renaissance, where he lives in a house filled with other boys such as himself. How Armand comes to receive the Dark Gift and a subsequent trip back to Russia with Marius, where he is very briefly reunited with his grieving parents, is Rice at her best. In the other books, we have always seen Armand through the eyes of Lestat and Louis, but here we see him in full, and learn that he is truly a damaged child, eternally in search of the love he lost when the home of his maker was destroyed by fanatical blood drinkers. Attempts to find it in a coven underneath Rome, and later in Paris with Lestat, do not work out. Later, in the aftermath of the events of MEMNOCH, a badly burned and injured Armand is rescued by two precocious human children named Sybelle and Benji, and he has a chance to find love and a family once again, but this being Anne Rice, she throws in another twist before the resolution in the last pages.

And if the best of Anne Rice is on display, some of her worst faults can be found in ARMAND as well, starting with her well known penchant for over description, making sure we know everything about every crook and nanny of every house, hovel, palace, basement, and back room, it is a wonder she doesn’t describe the interior of the rat’s holes. Rice’s characters always talk a lot, her chatty undead are a staple that many love about her books, but boy do they talk here, as some scenes run on pages longer than they should. In the second half, there are long arguments about faith, philosophy, the nature of man and the mind of God, and what Christ meant. This has always been seen as Rice working out her own views on God and religion and man, and while I do not have a problem with it, I can see how this might try the patience of many readers. Some have noted that Rice was so successful at this point in her career that she no longer had an editor when she wrote this book, if it is true, then it certainly shows. Also, the ever present homo eroticism is not everyone’s cup of tea, and the part of the book concerning the Roman vampire Marius and his house filled with boys may make some uncomfortable in what it implies, but this is Rice portraying an older, and distinctly non Christian culture.

In the end, I found Armand to be good company, and an excellent narrator, treating the reader as an equal, as someone worthy enough to share his story with. There have been preparations for a TV series based on THE VAMPIRE CHRONICLES, and I am sure that sooner or later, it will come to pass. When this happens, hopefully, they will do justice to Armand’s side of the story.

To Rice's credit, both 'Pandora' and 'The Vampire Armand' feel and read as if they were written AFTER 'Blood and Gold' which actually proceeded them by a few years. Pandora and Armand's perspectives on The Vampire Chronicles and their individual relationships with Marius are both quite interesting. That said, there's the increasingly clear Anne Rice problem of not enough eventual pay-off and resolution to relationships and conflicts between characters that get established early and that time apart, aging, expanding self-knowledge, perspective, and adequate opportunity should allow some degree of reconciliation and closure. Furthermore, the exact nature of the conflicts between Armand and Marius seem overly contrived and it seems illogical that they cause the degree of problems that they do. Nonetheless, this 'Alexandria Quartet' Multiple Persons POV discussion, rehash, expansion, and explanation of the larger and component parts of 'The Vampire Chronicles' is actually surprisingly satisfying.

At some point within the powerful narrative of The Vampire Armand we start to realized that maybe we have not so much a narrator in this lush tale as a truly competent and knowing tour guide back to the splendor of the Venice and Florance of the Italian Renaissance. We find ourselves in the world of Dante, Boccaccio, and Villion in literature, in slumbering nights of speculation in Roman law in the Corpus Juris Civilis, in the undisputed power and grandeur of the masterpieces of fine art of Fra Angelica, Bellini, and Giotto. Even the brilliant mural painting Procession of the Magi by Benozzo Gozzoli is hugely significant to our tale with Anne Rice’s signature style of being ironic and metaphoric. This is the classical rebirth in The Renaissance and Anne Rice brings us here lovingly in the voice of the Armand, dictated to the vampire David Talbot one night in St. Elizabeth’s orphanage, the lair of the vampire Lestat.

I cannot stress enough how important this book is to The Vampire Chronicles. This tale is a jewel in the series. As far as themes go, where Memnoch the Devil was the marriage of Science and Religion, The Vampire Armand is the marriage of Flesh and Spirit. We have some of the most provocatively sensual images of any of the chronicles, while having some of Anne Rice’s most spiritual and metaphysical contemplations. It is to Rice’s credit that she never sees this as a dichotomy of thought or theme, but as a merging of two states of being that complement and reinforce each other. From conjuring the image and meaning of the Italian Renaissance’s Ecstasy of St. Teresa by Bernini to quoting D.H. Lawrence’s allusion to Blake’s “Tiger, Tiger,” Rice speaks to us of the union of faith and the flesh with powerful results throughout. She seamlessly quotes the following:

This is the supremacy of the flesh, which devours all, and becomes transfigured into a magnificent brindled flame, a burning bush indeed.
This is the way of transfiguration into the eternal flame, the transfiguration through ecstasy of the flesh.

Prose, metaphors, and literary allusions just don’t get any better than this. And it’s all done within the sweeping majesty of image, color, and light, as well as beautiful poetry and music.

Anne Rice says as Armand:

“Forever ongoing, always in every cell and every atom” I prayed. “The Incarnation,” I said. “And the Lord has dwelt among us.” My words rang out again as if a roof covered us, a roof that could echo my song, though our roof was now the roofless sky alone.

Anne Rice clearly gives a sense of the flesh, becoming the flesh ---- in the context of the spiritual ---- whether it be erotic or exegesis, to stunning effect.

And one point, Rice goes so beyond the flesh, we are actually presented with a mystery within the very burning experience of Armand. I have not completely worked about my theories here, but these are passages that I will return to again in this deliberately ambiguous tell of events.

One of the fun things for me about being an Anne Rice reader is the adventure in finding meaning and metaphor within her work in unusual ways. The name of a character may sometimes be a name meaning that is the exact opposite of the personality of the character, giving us the ironic. As well, Rice can play for or against a metaphor, and this is especially true here with The Vampire Armand. What may seem a contradiction may very well not be.

Armand, known to Marius, his maker, as Amadeo, God’s very love, is brought into the undead before a rather stunning reproduction of a painting by Benozzo Bozzoli. Without giving anything away, I want you to know that even this event is not without a deep sense of irony and deep significance. It is these knowing asides in her work that Rice gives the readers deeper layers of theme. In going to and studying these works of art or literature, a fuller deeper sense of who Marius and Armand immerge. This is why I have become an ardent fan of her writing. One can keep peeling away the layers of meaning and significance for an ever richer experience.

If you have reached the point of finally reading The Vampire Armand, either chronologically or within context to the initial setup for the novel, you know that he has gone into the sun in the story of Memnoch the Devil. You know that he has been destroyed, or thought to be so. But the bigger question of why he did is never addressed there after his seeing the Veil of Veronica. The Vampire Armand as a novel not only addresses this question, but in light of it, gives us a vision of an immortal that is even the more tragic and heartbreaking for what we know will come after, once spoken of in the book The Vampire Lestat with the mention of the Children of Darkness. This novel, not only addresses this central issue, it completely confronts all of the implications for who Armand was, is, and will possibly be as time goes by. But that is only surface. The deeper message here speaks to the marginalized of our world, those cast out, those who are tossed aside. Personally, I think this novel speaks directly to gay Christians and other gay people of faith in a very powerful way, but as with Anne Rice metaphors, there is enough room here to speak to many other marginalized people.

One more thing before you enter into this powerful and important addition to The Vampire Chronicles. Ludwig von Beethoven’s Sonata No. 23, The Appassionata is a musical composition written in the early 1800s and considered by the composer, himself, to be his most tempestuous mid sonatas, which has shown to be a brilliant example of emotion in musical composition. This highly sophisticated and technically challenging piece, too, I will say is not a dichotomy, but a grand union of diverse sound and harmony, and one that he wrote on the cusp of his going deaf. To this, I would say this composition more than deserves a place in this wonderful novel, and in doing so, enhances the meanings and themes throughout.

I highly recommend The Vampire Armand. It’s a time-travel back to the rebirth of the classical, a love note to the disenfranchised, a marriage of the flesh and spiritual, and to many of us Anne Rice readers, a very important work of literary art.

I've finally read them all. This one still stands out as my favorite. It is really one of my favorite books by anyone. I've now read it three times. Armand was always my favorite character and his backstory did not disappoint. His relationship with Marius is as complex as it is beautiful. I really felt as if I was in Renaissance Italy. Just gorgeous on every level. I think the people who disliked it simply couldn't take the homosexual relationship of the main characters. If one of them had been a woman they probably would have loved the story. I have to give it to Anne Rice -- she writes better male homo erotica than any man I have yet to find. She really gets it.

If you are reading this costumer review, then you probably read the former installments of the Vampire Chronicles. If you didn't, my advice for you is to read them first. Almost all reviews here (including this one) will have spoilers.

The story isn't mostly new. Rice uses (again) the conversation/interview/dictate scheme to allow the main character to express his views, the way he interprets events, emotions and religious beliefs. In this book Armand, aka Amadeo, aka Andrei is the protagonist.

This book can be mainly divided in three parts:

Before Vampire Lestat (including Andrei abduction, travel to Venice, living as an extremely wealthy protégé of Marius de Romanus, debaucheries and living a dangerous life leading to a tragic event that eventually forces Marius to turn him into a Vampire, his life with Marius and the attack by the fanatic vampires that believe themselves as lords of darkness and pawns of Satan and the Lord; sect that Armand follows until he finds THE man, and he is...

Lestat! Now the story turns to a retelling of known events but in the perspective of Armand. It is possibly the most enlightening part of the plot, and one marvelously executed. From the destruction of the sect till the return of Lestat from the high and low adventures from hellish realms and his sacred trophy.

Present. The last part changes a lot some assumptions like the simple fact that Armand should have DIED! Here, rice shows his survival tale introducing two interesting new characters: Sybelle (and her omnipresent apassionata) and Benji. This last section and the epilogue are important for the advancement of the story, for there are important events that unfolds (the use of the epilogue as a post scriptum is extremely crafty, so you don't see it coming by the initial description of events).

Now some thoughts. Modern Vampire literature owes everything to Anne Rice. Before the seventies there was simply no sympathy for the dev...sorry...the vampire. They were simply the terrible monster to be defeated. Obviously much has changed in the past decades. Including some great movies, the fabulous world of darkness by White Wolf (with hundreds of books, a TV Series, Many video games, Storytelling games, board games), young readers and teenager vampire mythology, etc. Through all this, Anne Rice managed to cleanse herself of external influences trying to maintain her originality. Not to be influenced, keeping herself as an influence. That is a true feat. Now, for the hard part...obviously she resorts to tried methods, and the way her characters see the world is extremely similar for all her characters. They all are high thinkers, beautiful, taking attention to fashion and skin care details that most man would never even think of checking (and there is no vampire transformation has a possible excuse...the characters, even when human, think alike!). Her historical details could be better. For example, Marius de Romanus was a first century son of a Roman patrician and a celtic slave...he was given high education and even attained political power. That, with a long flowing blond hair...even when neither Romans nor Celts in the first century AD used long hair fashions for centuries...it's like having an European politician of the early years of the xxth century with a Mohawk!

The first part of this book is quite boring, reaching levels very close to homo erotic writing; its farfetched (everybody are immensely sexually attracted to the main character, even persons from very different cultures which had quite different patterns of beauty...and I believe that the authoress still doesn't understand the concept of heterosexuality: a person can recognize someone of the opposite sex has very pretty without wanting to have physical relations with it, or behaving as a teenager).

The last part has one of the biggest blunders of the vampire chronicles...HUGE SPOILER AHEAD...why the hell Marius de Romanus changed a kid and a psychologically damaged person into vampires, persons he didn't knew anything about them! It's Insane!

All in all, this book slightly advances the plot; it's magnificently written with elegant prose and beautiful descriptions and provides a fresh perspective to old events. Recommended for followers of Anne Rice and the chronicles and to read brilliant prose; but it could be so much better.

The first time I picked up "The Vampire Armand", following a thorough read-through of the other novels in the series, I was 16. At that time, I was completely enamoured by the book, gorging myself on reading, and coming back again and again to reread my favorite parts. It quickly became my favorite book. Recently, I decided to reread it, to see if it would still hold the same charm to me as an adult, and I have to say, my feelings are mixed.

On the one hand, one of the biggest attractions of the whole VH series, and the trademark of Rice's style, is her rich, descriptive, intricate writing. "Armand" is extremely atmospheric, diving into Renaissance era Italy with all the depth that could only come from the most thorough appreciation of all the riches Renaissance art has to offer. Every chapter is laced with descriptions of architecture, sculptures and paintings, describing not only the views, but the style, the techniques, the master artists of the era, - rereading the book, I often found myself thinking it would make great study material for an Art History exam, and I do mean that in a good way. Lovers of art will no doubt be pleasantly surprised, and speaking for myself, this is my favorite part of "The Vampire Armand", and Ann Rice's writing in general.

On the other, I must say that, being less giddy about the sheer fact that I was reading a romance novel about vampires, like I was at 16, I found part of that same style I fell in love with to be much too syrupy sweet. As hypocritical it is to complain about romance while reading a romance novel, this book doesn't exactly hold back on the soap. At times it's delicious: Marius and Armand aren't the most conventional of couples, and theirs is definitely an extremely colorful, explosive, emotional story, and not one to be called uninventive in terms of writing either. But at other times, the lovers' spats, the jealousy and the drama make comparisons to the cheaper kind of romance novels come to mind, which might really put off people who aren't into the latter type of literature.

This book is about relationships much more than it is about blood-drinking action: the element of romance and personal story prevails very strongly, making it more of a memoir than anything else. The action isn't absent, and at times it is quite fast-paced, but this one is definitely a book much more suited to lovers of romantic stories than those who prefer their books with more fight and adventure.

I hoped that Ms. Rice would write a worthy successor to the first three novels in her Vampire Chronicles. "Body Thief" and "Memnoch" were disappointing sequels; "Armand," too, often misses the mark. Ms. Rice abandons in the first half of this novel the simple, elegant, sophisticated prose of her first three vampire novels. Here she luxuriates in her prose, losing herself in over-rich metaphors and descriptions. Although beautifully written by itself, this prose, in the context of the novel, acts as a filler to offset a lean plot and poorly developed themes. Armand's mortal life is, for the most part, characterized by an exhaustive series of promiscuous adventures rather than by any thoughtful events. Even Armand's dim recollections of his Russian Orthodox upbringing offer no real intellectual depth; they are sensual only. The plot becomes more interesting after Armand's death and rebirth. The novel's themes -- spirituality and physicality, inhuman and human nature, and belief in God -- although ambitious and significant, are thrown at rather than offered to the reader, for example, during Armand's sexual escapades and childhood musings. The discussions between Armand and Marius, especially, seem abrupt and clumsy. They reveal nothing more than what the words themselves say. "Interview," in contrast, is much more successful thematically when, for instance, Armand discusses God and Satan with Louis. Armand's conversation there is important both for its immediate meaning and for what it subtly infers about vampiric nature and Louis' real conflicts. The characters in "Armand" are also not in keeping with their former physical and emotional likenesses. Rice cannot decide whether to portray Armand in a child's body or a young man's body. She uses the latter image in the first three novels, and it infuses Armand with complexity. He should possess a young man's body and an innocent but mature face to suggest that his demonic, almost maniacal, nature is disguised by his angelic physicality. He is "a master of pretense" and paradox. The image of him in "Armand," however, is confused, and it depletes the richness of his character. He is "robust" and "never was a waif" yet he seems a child to others. He is well-developed sexually, inferring puberty, yet he cannot grow a beard. He is not a paradox but a grotesque. For Marius' part, Rice forgets that he had white, not blond, hair in earlier novels as if she wants him to temporarily stand in for Lestat. Emotionally, Armand seems stunted. He has little of the amazing intuition that he demonstrates in the earlier novels until the last part of "Armand." Marius, in the first half, is likewise not his formerly serious self; he is a flamboyant pedofile. He does change, though, after Armand's transformation. The second half of the novel, beginning with Armand's transformation, picks up considerably. The prose is more tolerable, less indulgent, and the characters are more true. Part III is most wonderful. Armand's depiction of the other vampires is the one really mature moment in the novel; it is immensely satisfying and thrilling. I hope that Rice's subsequent novels will retain the language and atmosphere of that moment.

Well, I must say this book was a dissapointment. Interview with a Vampire was a beautiful book, it capyured all the beauty and romance of the vampires. The Vampire Lestat was one of the best, it's narrator the most amazing vampire of them all. The Queen of the Damned tells you of the beginning of the vampires and their eve, it perfectly fills in the blanks. Then it all starts to go down hill with Tale of the Body Theif and Memnoch (although the philosophy of memnoch was interesting), they were basically rip-offs of Faust. Then there was Pandora, the ultimate mistake, a mess of uninteresting unoriginal crap. And then we come to Armand, one of my favorite characters by far, and what does she do? She ruins him for me. He was always depicted by his tag sign, the "boticelli angel", and now he seems like a clone of so many others. He always had a depth to him and in this book Rice made him mediocre, nothing to really set him apart from the rest. It is so sad because she accomplished it so well in her earlier books with Lestat the "Brat Prince", and Louis the morbid romantic, Daniel the boy interviewer, David the old english gentleman, Maharet the family gaurdian, and Gabrielle the pleasinly dislikeable one. Even with her short lived characters like Nicholas the violinist, Akasha the eve, and Claudia the angry doll. But in Armand she loses all that, her characters like Sybelle and Benji are written as if out of a cookie-cutter, made to be duplicates of so many others, Armand becomes a true monster who neither relishes life nor is saddened by it, he simply exists. And what did she thing she was doing to Marius? He was nowhere near the gaurdian and beloved scholar Pandora and Lestat described, instead he was a pouting, territorial, pedofile! And the parts about the brothels, was Rice living out her own fantasies? Overall I think she to took far to little time to write this, she should have thought about it more and developed the characters and plot better so we wouldn't run in to the clone-personas and retold-far-to-many-times stories. But there were some highlights, some points of beauty that should not be overlooked. Armand/Andrei/Amadeo's memories of Kiev, and the part about his family was definitely the work of the old Rice and should have been longer. And the relationship of Armand and Riccardo was well done, especially the part in the prison. That's about it...oh, except I think if she MUST write another book she should make it about someone we have only heard a little about like Flavius or Santino. So I say, read this book just don't have high expectations.

-This review refers to the first paperback edition, not the mass market paperback.
My edition comes with an Anne Rice interview. She says she felt like Armand needed his own story because so much had been said about Louis and Lestat.
This book was dictated by David but they are Armand's words. The story begins where "Memnoch" left off.
Warning: Lestat is not the central character in this book. While Armand tells his story, Lestat lies comatose in a cathedral.
In this very lucid and detailed novel, it is clear that Armand and Lestat are near opposites. In "Vampire Lestat," Rice had constructed Lestat as a lover of evil, a "brat prince." Here, Armand seems more kind and in love with the gentler side of humanity. Lestat, before he supposedly met the Creator in "Memnoch", despised God. Here, Armand desperately wants to believe that God exists.
Armand's story begins in Kiev where he is a painter of ikons in the Monastery of the Caves. He is kidnapped and taken to Venice, where he becomes a member of Marius's household. Marius houses and schools several young boys, and one could say that many scenes in Marius's household are very pedophilic, especially several homoerotic scenes with Marius and Armand. I choose not to look at it that way. Marius loves the boys, and is more of a father and teacher rather than a lover. This is not exactly so with Armand. Suffering from a fatal stab-wound, Armand is given the Dark Gift by Marius. The reader is then taken rather quickly through the rest of Armand's life, including the Theater of the Vampires.
Do not pick up this book and read with a closed mind. Many scenes are homoerotic, but don't think that Armand is a homosexual vampire. He, like nearly all of Rice's vampires (including Lestat), adores the beautiful. Thus, there are heterosexual love scenes, too.
The reader gets to meet Armand's human family in Kiev. His father is truly a tragic character. Rice's human characters are just as beautiful as her vampires.
Armand also finds a companion within Marius's school of boys, Riccardo, one of the eldest of the group. Their relationship is one of the more interesting segments of the book. Riccardo's demise at the hands of Santino's Coven is grotesque, and the scene is unforgettable.
Finally, Armand's relationship with Sybelle and Benji is simply precious and sweet. Sybelle and Benji are human children that Armand saves from an abusive brother. Benji is young, but acts grown-up, and he is inquisitive. Sybelle, who doesn't seem to be completely right in the head, plays Beethoven's Appassionata all day, and Armand loves listening to it. On a side note, it is a great piano sonata and is recommended to anyone who reads this book.
Armand has thus come full circle. He has progressed from student to master.
This book made me fall in love with Armand, just as I have fallen in love with Lestat. They are completely different yet equally beautiful characters.

Having read the entire Vampire Armand book standing up in a bookstore for hours, I'll just have to say that the book was not worth the pain I had from all those hours of standing. I mean I used to love Armand the way Lestat saw him; a young vampire boy who had the face of a choirboy, so innocent and yet so ethereal. But Rice has destoryed the innocence of Armand by letting him annouce to the whole world that he is gay/bi.Not that I have anything againest gays but having painted Armand previously in such angelic light, it is hard to stomach that he is just another impressionable vampire, so shallowly concerned with the surface beauty of things just like Lestat was.
However, even if Rice's sense of preceptive of Armand has changed here, her ingenious pace of storytelling has not deserted her yet. Just as I have read many of the reviews, the reason why most of the reviewers read her books is simply because of her reputation to write the most vivid stories. Her use of imagery has not failed her yet and she has produced another Anne Rice signature novel (which did not quite make the standards in Memnoch and Violin)
Au contaire to give the woman credit, she does display some new ideas in the book which did not quite meet up with the taste of everyone. But afterall she is Anne Rice and even if her preceptive of the Vampiric World changes, one thing does not and that will always be her sense of asthetics which are so severely displayed in the book and I thought she had lost when she wrote Memnoch.
In the end, I'll still have to admit that I am a true Anne Rice fan even if she has sorely disappointed in the Vampire Armand.Just don't attempt a book about David in this current frame of mind, it is just not worth it and David is first and foremost a Man of the scientific age.

I thought the book was very well done. Many people were not happy with the homosexual content, but there are many points in Rice's books that are suggestive of homosexuality and pediophile. She gave us some ideas about the relationship between Marius and Armand in earlier books, so there should be little surprise concerning their sexual exchanges. It may be a bit uncomfortable (and sad) to think about, but having a slave as a sexual pet was very much a way of life at that point in history. And the sex is really not that explicit. I did like the fact that she made the relationship between the two very beautiful and devoted. I could almost understand (if not condone) how a young man and an older man can have such love. I was totally captivated by their relationship. It was reminiscent of the Claudia/Louis love. I did however keep things in perspective. One must remember that it is, after all, a fantasy. None of us really want some undead person, no matter how beautiful and philosophical, hanging around our house. Just as I don't think men should be seducing young boys. I must add that I especially like how these vampires just absolutly adore each other one minute and are positively put out the next. I believe that is how Rice is trying to show us that they are so different in each other's eyes. For example, my side of an argument is not the same as the person I was arguing with. I rate books on how easily I get drawn in and forget the time. This one was a "Oh! has it been two hours already! Looks like Micky D's for dinner, again."

The unabridged "audio" version of this book conjured up MORE then this mature heterosexual female could handle at times! I didn't know if I should be ashamed of myself, embarrassed or insulted!! However it did endear me to the beautiful Armand, and keep me rivited to the character, mainly because during the entire book I was invisioning what I consider to be the "perfect" actor to bring Armond to life on screen. His name is Tyler Christopher and before you cast a big name "glam" star to the role, you would be wise to check out this young "beautiful", soulful actor. I don't know if it was the way the narrator portrayed Marius, but he was Shawn Connery in my mind and both he and the young Tyler made the most dramatic "motion picture" in my head. WOW!! As usual I feel that Anne is a little to "wordy" at times with too much religious implications in her stories, and I dare say if I had read this book, my puritanical instincts would have "glossed" over the very erotic portions of the young "mortal" Armands sexual education as well as the religious overtones and it wouldn't have had such an impact on me. I read the Vampire Chronicles many years ago and I may just have to revisit them via "audio" books to get the full impact. In closing, I'm caught up the Annes trap of making me "love" her Vampires, rather then recoil from them!

Although I was initially sad to see Anne Rice stray from Lestat as hero of her Vampire Chronicles, and take a new direction with Armand, I was more than satisfied with the outcome. Armand appears as little more than an anti-hero in previous novels, and yet I was horrified to have him killed off in Memnoch, while never having been fully explored as a character. The blurb at the end of Pandora, revealing Armand as the subject of the next 'chronicle' was very enticing. And the book delivers.
Armand the mortal never reaches adulthood before receiving the 'dark gift' as it is described. He is sold into slavery as a youth, placed in a brothel and ravaged, and is bought by the mysterious Marius, who seems to wish him to be more of a 'companion' than servant or lover. Marius keeps the truth of his vampiric existance from Armand for some time, until Armand discovers Marius' secret, and all but begs to be made a vampire, to remain with his 'master' eternally, only to be taken from him by force, and begins to wander the world as one of the undead.
Anne Rice delivers all the wonder and uncertainty of boyhood, even in a world that existed hundreds of years ago, and portrays just the right mixture of indignance and angst with Armand, and he emerges as a sympathetic, angelic, romantic being. He is a seeker of beauty, in art, in music, in people, in life, as much as Lestat is a seeker of salvation and redemption from his bloodlust. While Lestat seems to long for absolution for his soul from the crime of blood-drinking, Armand seems in search of his soul, never having understood it in his mortal youth.
Although it is a far cry from the sense I got of Armand in the preceeding novels, having never fully explored him as a character before, Anne Rice produced another hero whom I hope she revisits in novels to come. This is a book I will read again some day, and look forward to doing so.

I love the Vampire Chronicles, always have, always will. The first three were awesome. However, The Vampire Armand (as well as the 4th and 5th installations)has left me very disappointed...It had SUCH a great start! Let's discover Armand! The tutelage by Marius, the boys, Bianca, the return to Kiev...and then all of a sudden, that fateful night in Venice, it went all to pot! Half of the loose ends were never explained (Bianca; Marius' recovery; the 5 century stint with the Teatre de Vampires even though he had been trained by Marius; the loss of the "all-enduring" love between Marius and Armand; and Marius' new bonds with Santino?? Huh?)! The plot went too far with Armand "dying" in New York, and meeting Jesus... It seems as though Rice has a good thing going with the vampires...and its a good thing to throw in the religious aspect of it, but to completely go overboard doesn't seem her style and its not necessary when she has SUCH RICH characters to play with! Louis was virtually absent, as was Santino! The inner warrings and the inner preoccupations of the vampires has such vivid texture that the sqaundering of opportunity to explore that left me sorely disappointed. I won't give up on Rice, though... And if you really want a good read by her, try The Witching Hour. THAT ranks up there with the original Vampire trilogy.

I read all the vampire books around the same time, one after another, which may not have been a good idea. I say this because Armand and Blood and Gold are too redundant, and redundancy is a problem that I see a lot with Anne Rice.

But that isn't the biggest issue that I had with this book. You have to expect a bit of repetition when you are writing about characters so closely interlaced.

Armand is a boy of rougher stock, from the cold Ukraine, and from a modest family. He had to deal with these orthodox beliefs that were rigid and unforgiving. Before Marius gets to him, and even before he is kidnapped and sold into slavery, this is a character made of tougher stuff than most of the other vampires we already know.

I expected more than the fop he became, I guess. Rice can get away with pedophilia because her story is set in a time when it was totally normal and not necessarily a crime, so I will not gripe about that despite it being an uncomfortable read. I don't care who these vampires get their jollies from. It's all part of reading Anne Rice. Armand, however, ends up being nearly indistinguishable from Lestat, Marius, and Louis in that he is just another undead dandy that feeds off the living at night. Those few hundred years with the cult in France did not change any of that in his later years after he and Marius were separated.

And maybe that's part of reading Anne Rice. The male characters are always androgynous and bisexual, weeping at the sight of a painting. I've learned that her female characters are far more intriguing.

I also did not like the ending. Not even a little bit. But I will not spoil things by going there. This book got my four stars because it /is/ a good read, and Rice really does take you back to Renaissance era Italy. Foppish or not, Armand is one of those characters we like to know more about because of the manner in which he was introduced in The Vampire Lestat. If you are a die-hard Rice fan, Armand is an essential in the collection.

It did not get five because Armand is like the one candy in the dish with the different color on the wrapper. Once you open it and realize that the candy inside is the same as all the rest, you can pretty much say that it was at least enjoyable,classic Rice that you still didn't regret ingesting.

'The Vampire Armand,' is Anne Rice's account of the four hundred year old bloodsucker who made his first appearence in 'Interview with the Vampire.' 'Armand' begins with the protagonist relaying his story to the newly undead David Talbot. The story Armand tells is that of his abduction from his boyhood home of Kiev, to being sold into slavery in Constantinople, to his eventual education and seduction by the Vampire Marius in Renaissance Venice. The story ends with Armand's account of his part in the events detailed in Rice's earlier work, 'Memnoch the Devil.' While Armand and Marius are undoubtedly two of Rice's greatest creations, the story told here is rather slow and inconsistant. Just when Rice gives you some real food for thought and truly chilling moments she backs away quickly and indulges in beautifully written, though ultimatly unsatisfying, sensual prose. Missing is the rye wit of Rice's greatest protagonist, the Vampire Lestat. That having been said Rice does deliver some wonderful moments that capture the spirit of the 'Vampire Chronicles' brilliantly. Armand's faith is also an amazing spin on the typically jaded Vampire attitude toward life and love. Fans of the series should check it out but those new to the world of Rice's Vampires would do better to start with 'Interview with the Vampire,' or 'The Vampire Lestat.'

I don't understand all these reviewers that have said 'The Vampire Armand' is difficult to read and a struggle to get through. This is Anne Rice, not Doesteovsky for goodness sake. As juicy and exciting as 'Interview with a Vampire' and 'The Vampire Lestat' are, I don't see them as anything more than short, fluffy, and satisfying beach reads. And this book is no different.

But with that said, in my opinion, out of the six books in the Vampire Chronicle series, this one rates near the top. I would place it right behind 'The Vampire Lestat' and ahead of 'Queen of The Damned' for my favorite. I found the story to be very interesting and beautifully drawn out, the pacing was solid, and the prose was at times quite lyrical and beautiful. Armand has always been my favorite vampire. I think he is as complex as an Anne Rice character is bound to get and I could never have imagined the Vampire Chronicles without him. For many people, he's 'THE scene-stealer' of the series. For as long as I've been a fan of the books, the passages and subplots pertaining to him are the ones that I go back to and reread, time and time again.

Armand: The beautiful and vain monster with a face of an angel who used sex and seduction as a weapon and cruelty as his second nature, his constant back and forth stuggle between being a naive, needy, romantic-at-heart to a sadistic, vindictive, black-hearted murderer, his desperate need for comfort, companionship, and stability, his centuries as the leader of the Paris Coven/Theatre of Vampires, his love/hate, oftentimes violent/oftentimes touching relationship with Lestat, the obsessive and masochistic love he had for mortals and fellow vampires, the woe-is-me and intermittingly annoying, mischevious, playful, innocent, and childish persona... Everything about him is a contradiction, every part of his character is extreme. For those reasons I always found myself utterly intrigued by him. He is what a Vampire is to me, and I think he's an infinitely more interesting character than Lestat. While Lestat is a memorable and entertaining 'hero' of the series, I feel like Armand is the 'tragic hero'. He's the multidimensional one, the one that brings heart, conflict, mystery, and a sense of real humanity to the series. Say what you will about his overall importance as a character in The Chronicles, but you have to admit, he is, if nothing else, intriguing. There is just so much in his character and actions that could become fodder for a great novel.

Now, is the novel perfect? Of course not. The nitpickers will find more than a few anomalies with some of the details and linear storyline and most will probably wish that more was said about the Paris Coven and the Theatre (the two things most often associated with him). But in my opinion, this book, more or less, does deliver and it's everything that any fan of the Vampire Chronicles could wish for in a book about Armand.

And maybe I'm just 'weird', but I liked the homoerotic themes that went throughout the novel. The Vampire Chronicles to me is all about homoeroticism and (bi)sexuality, it's an intergral theme that connects the series and it's just as apparant in the other books, so I don't understand what all the complaints are for. If you don't have an issue with the homoeroticism in 'The Vampire Lestat' or 'The Queen of The Damned', you will not have problems with it in this book.

I should have guessed that Armand would have survived his burning at the end of Memnoch the Devil. How could there be Armand the Vampire if he died?
This is a long narrative by Armand on his relationship with Marius. The narrative is dripping with description of verything as perceived by the vampire's preternatural senses. This description is wonderful on its own but it gets repetitive - especially after reading it in the other vampire chronicles.
As the previous chronicles, Anne builds up to great drama and then she lets off the steam halfway. The steam here is let off when Armand and Marius is attacked by the Roman Coven. Marius burned and left for dead while Armand was saved.
That was the last Armand saw Marius and thought him to be dead until 500 years later. (We all knew from the earlier chronicles that Marius didn't die). So the burning question which is unsatisfactorily explained was why Marius didn't save Armand from the Roman Coven? Why didn't Marius sought Armand when he had recovered from his burns? Why did Marius abandon Armand when he had loved him?
It all went downhill after that and it ended with Marius turning Benji and Sybelle into vampires against Armand's wishes. Why did the wise Marius turn them into vampires without even batting his eyes, after all his earlier stand against the making of vampires?
So many questions to be resolved - another unsatisfying novel.

I read Pandora, the last vampire installment. (read my review!) I hated it. I decided to give my favorite vampire's story a chance by reading The Vampire Armand. Sadly, I was disappointed again. Though better than Pandora, I refuse to believe that Armand was as homosexual as Rice made him. If it was accepted back in the time that he was alive to pleasure and be pleasured by men, I'm sure we didn't need to hear about it every twenty pages during the telling of his mortal life. I am not homophobic, I would just like to see a straight vampire from Anne Rice. The book itself was written well, but it did drone on without an apparent end to the mortal Armand. When we hear about Armand as a vampire, I feel we, as an audience, were cheated. Rice practically skips over four hundred years just to detail maybe half a decade of Armand's mortal life. And what she threw in about Claudia? Pathetic!(I won't ruin it for anyone.) Rice needs to reread her own books and find out what she wants to write about: garbage, smut, or vampires. Because right now, the three are not working as one. But I must say, the ending made it all worthwhile. (ALMOST!)

I only have one word for this book. Wow. Armand has never been a really important in Rice's vampire chronicles until now. Since I started the vampire books I've been intrigued by Armand. Who made him what he is? What part does he play to Lestat? In this "biography" of Armand, you find out everything about him, you've ever wanted to know. This deeply sensual and dark novel will hold your eyes until you're through. At first I didn't want to read this book, because Lestat wasn't the main character. But as I read on, I found out that Armand wasn't the quite brooding person I thought him to be. He's as brash and impudent and Lestat was. When Armand got torn away from his Master-the ancient Marius-I almost lost interest in the book, because Marius added so much to it. I'm glad I didn't stop, because I would've missed a terrific novel. I encourage you to read about Armand, and be amazed anew at Anne Rice's ability to create masterpieces.

I thoroughly enjoyed reading "The Vampire Armand". Not much of his life was given to the readers in previous books, just crumb by crumb. Here the reader gets the whole enchilada, figuratively speaking. I must admit when I was reading how he was captured as a slave to be sold, that part of the book was a bit too lengthy and kinda bored me to tears. Armand led quite the hedonistic life with Marius, up until he was separated from his master by those rogue vampires. From the hedonistic life he had with Marius, Armand moves on to leading a coven of vampires whose beliefs do not coincide with what Marius installed in Armand's morals. And then we see Armand in modern day society from when he tried to set himself on fire after viewing the veil that God gave to Lestat to his new life with his two new companions Sybelle and Benji. Compelling for the most part but it could have used a little improvement I suppose.

This book tells the story of Armand, from his kidnapping from a Ukraine, via his initiation as a vampire, in Venice, to Paris and the Vampires' theatre, up to the present day. All of your Anne Rice favourites are here.
This book is less about plot, and more about the investigation of an important character, and of course, the usual pure indulgence in sensual delights. Armand has tried just about everything, including abstinence, and we get his take on all of it.
I've re-read this book, and it doesn't tire the second time round. There is so much detail, that there is always something new to appreciate. As historic fiction, this book is fascinating, because it takes you to unusual places. As fiction it is fun, because even minor characters get properly rendered.
If you have started to read Anne Rice and like it, then this book is a worthy successor to the rest of the series. I can't be sure how this book would read by itself - obviously it has spoilers for the other books, especially the first, but I think that it would stand well on its own.

Anne Rice created the best and most toroughly described group of vampires anyone has ever invented. There are many of them and their lives are connected to eachother in one way or another. It this book we meet Armand, who made his first apperence in the first book of The vampire chronicles - Interwiev with a vampire (the movie, by the way, compared to the book - ...it was good as just a movie, but not as a representation of Ann Rice`s vampires)
In this book we meet Armand, firstly as a scared boy, taken from Russia and named Amadeo by his new master Marius. We follow his story, his loses, and changes of life and values. We are with him when he changes his name to Armand, and we find out why. We follow him in his loves and loses, his companions over the years and his development.
The book is also very erotic as Rice describes Armand`s relationship with Marius, and vampires are quite erotic creatures afterall.
It is not the best novel Anne Rice ever wrote about vampires, but it is far from beeing the worst.

Armand has been in most (if not every) vampire books Anne has written, Armand seems to play and important role in the life of Louis, Lestat, and Marius. This time Armand gets all the attention, and he begans to tell his story to David Tabolt. Here are a few positive points and also negatives

Positives:

1) This book is about Armand, and Armand can't be left out. He played an important role in Interview, Lestat, and Blood and Gold. To leave him out would be absurd. He deserves to tell his story whether people like it or not.

2) Armand (Anne Rice) does a decent job of telling a consistent story: His mortal life, How he became a vampire, How he became a coven leader, and his reunion with Marius.

3) Anne Rice wrote the book elegantly and diligently as always, so for that I give credit.

4) Very dramatic or Drama-like (spoilers!)when Armand searches his family origins, when he was seperated from Marius, and when his loved ones became vampire.

5) In other Books, Armand seems powerful and authorative, but surprisingly you'll find him different in the other side. I find it wierd, but I would like to argue that people change and so can armand. This is the very irony when Anne Rice writes books about a certain character, she goes deep into thier true selves when they tried to hide it in other books

Negatives:

1) I at first liked the book but then as I got to the Apassionata I found it kind of bored because this piece was like an extra piece of Armand's life. I didn't read this piece for almost a month but decided to finish it, but i didn't find it half bad but I thought It wasn't the best part in the book.

2) for those who are homophobic, I don't reccomend you to read this. I find homoerrotic scenes very trivial, this is one of the minor criticisms but people tend to make a big deal out of it.

3) I didn't read Memnoch the devil, if I had the book would've been better undrestood, so this kind of ruined it for me.

4) I just didn't find the book all that interesting as others, Armand was never the best character in my list, which is my opinion.

Armand just never really appealed to me very much, He did catch my attention in Interview. I have minor criticisms that does ruin my taste for the book by one star. The only reason why I gave credit to this book was I thought the story was connected to other books and consistent with his life. I found the book decent for revealing the real Armand.

I have been reading over the other reader comments and I am a bit surprised. For me, reading Anne Rice is a delve into a forbidden sensual world that allows me to escape into something that I will never know in this reality. It is entertainment, a good quick read, an exciting story. I am not looking for anything too deep, and perhaps that is why I wasn't disappointed with this latest effor, "The Vampire Armand." It was exactly what I thought it would be - it tied in elements from the other cronicles (which if you haven't read them, you are really missing a lot of the point of this book), explained the history of the character and why he is what he is and why he has done the things he has, was incredibly sensual and didn't really make me think too hard to learn any great life lessons, but did allow me to go on a wonderful journey for a short time. Lighten up, people! If you are looking for something deep and intricate on the lessons of life, you are reading the wrong author! Anne - thanks again for a wonderful tale.

Through most of this novel, I figured on my review being two stars. It wasn't abysmally bad, but rather failed to justify its own existence - it didn't tell anything worth saying. Rice fails to find an original or compelling voice for Armand, and the plot is largely dull repitition of what we learned in The Vampire Lestat. It was the Claudia sequence which initially made me go down to one star. It was stupid, pointless, and incredibly ill-advised. It warps out of nowhere, unwelcome, and leaves without even being satisfying! What was Rice thinking? That he readers wanted to learn that garbage? The ending third of the book, although Sybelle and Benji are dull characters, was better handled since it provided Armand an interesting dilemma, so it's two stars overall. But still, a great disappointment.

"The Vampire Armand" is the sixth novel in the non-horror series "The Vampire Chronicles" exposing the life story of the childlike vampire. Armand narrates his life to fellow vampire David Talbot with splendid descriptions of the characters and the environments and several religious experiences.

The only fascinating incident is when Marius descends brutally and horrifically on a group of victims, an encounter that does not occur often and should with the gruesome mystique behind vampires. Otherwise I was not fond of the book.

The first quarter of the book reads as soft-core very young adult (if one considers Armand a child then it's pedophilia) pornography with wanted and unwanted adult relations. Furthermore, a great amount of time is spent studying the intricacies of religious artwork, especially paintings of Christian significance. From a reader hoping to find vampire experiences outside of enthrallment with the depth and emotion of the paintings, these repeated details are quite boring. Claudia's death was a disappointing explanation, quickly thrown together and without emotion unlike when describing religious art for endless pages. Then there are unlikely mortals who watch a feeding with tearing out a heart or ripping facial flesh without any reaction, which was also seen with the virginal Dora. I think people of relative clarity would be disgusted or offended by such manners especially without being spellbound.

The author forgoes some of the traditional limitations found in the vampire genre such as the crucifix, holy water, and garlic, creating her own world where images on reflective surfaces are allowed. The outrageously powerful vampires have telepathy and the eldest can perform telekinesis and spontaneous combustion on the younger vampires, abilities I've not encountered in other works. I believe having certain restrictions on the undead brings some balance to the victims yet the novel isn't as much about the conflict between vampires and humans as it is about internal turmoil.

Thank you.

I love Anne Rice's earlier books: Interview with the vampire, The Vampire Lestat, The queen of the damned, and even (for comic relief) Tale of the body thief but as some of you already know I completely dislike her later books (anything of hers after 1995).

Tonight I want to discuss The Vampire Armand. The Vampire Armand's entire story was told in a chapter of The Vampire Lestat novel over twenty years earlier. That chapter had been called The Vampire Armand.

This new version of Armand's story changes quite a few things.

For starters it completely ignores that Armand (an eternally seven-teen-year-old vampire) has told us that Marius never hurt him. Now a good chunk of the new book is kinky s and m fun involved with an under-age Armand being whipped (and liking it) by the eternal forty-year-old, Marius. I've debated this content with people who tell me the times were different then and it was socially acceptable. That still doesn't make me comfortable with little boy Armand and S and M scenes.

Other changes from the version of the story told to Lestat are:

In The Vampire Lestat and The Queen of the damned it's claimed that Marius' big mistake was making Armand a vampire before he was an adult, that he had done it because he was too impatient and felt terrible about it. But in The vampire Armand novel it's obvious that he had no other choice or Armand would have died from poisoning. Would he have rather Armand died than make him young? If it was to save his life why did he react as if he had done it out of impatience and should have waited until he was older?

In The Vampire Armand novel, Armand claims that he tried to 'help' Claudia by sewing her head on to the body of an adult female vampire. Is Armand really supposed to be that unintelligent that he'd think a tiny four-year-old head, sewn on to an adult body with black thread like a Frankenstein doll would be better than being trapped as a child? If he had done it it would have only been out of cruelty. Also in Interview with The vampire Louis saw Claudia's body. Armand did say he had put the head back before burning her so Louis never knew what he had done but Louis said her body was just like charcoal, he'd have noticed if the head had been removed and put back, wouldn't he? If Armand had so badly wounded Claudia she would not have been able to have clutched to Madeline as she died the way she had. Being as weak as Claudia was, she would have needed the time to heal to even move.
That's another little inconsistency of Anne Rice's. Decapitation CAN kill a vampire. Ignoring the fact that Akasha was dying when she was decapitated in The Queen of the damned and the only thing that saved the vampires was Mekare eating her heart and brain as the vampires wilted and lost consciousness around her- Anne Rice now has it (since The vampire Armand) that a vampire's decapitated head can be reatatched IF it's put back in place within a few seconds of it being removed. After all, a human head lives five seconds after it's chopped off. So I guess she twisted this scientific knowledge for vampire physiology. But seriously, could Armand sew a head onto a body in under five seconds? Seriously. That's a delicate operation, even with preternatural speed, sewing flesh. She seriously goofed with this nonsense. Armand could not have conducted his experiment on Claudia in The Vampire Armand.
Armand could never have done the sewing Claudia's head on to an adult body that he discribes in The Vampire Armand. Louis, Madeline and Claudia were captured in the pre-dawn. There was little time for the mock trial and then sealing Louis in the wall, and shoving Claudia outside. Certainly not enough time for an elaborate torture to 'help' her. Armand would pass out at dawn.

Armand, as a character, never appealed to me. He's too sadistic and too obsessed with dominating those he supposedly loves. I guess I never entirely got over what he did to Nicolas in The Vampire Lestat novel. Nicolas, a violinist, was left in Armand's care so Armand cut off his hands and locked him in a room with his violin he couldn't touch. It was already established that Nicolas could be restrained with rope but Lestat had justified it to himself that Armand was trying to restrain Nicki. I think Lestat just wanted a reason to not bother with revenge.

Armand is such a 'nice guy' he considers blood raping the person he's telling his story to.

Armand's sadism always gets the better of me but aside from a dislike for the character himself, it's the inconsistencies that get to me most of all.

One funny line in the novel though is when Armand says 'I promised I would never drink again.' And the start of the following paragraph (the next line of the novel) was 'I got drunk the next day.' I also liked that Lestat finally woke up from his coma at the end but went right back into it before the next book somehow...

Also it doesn't REALLY explain how Armand survived the events of Memnoch The Devil. It's like 'I tried to burn in the sun and then I woke up over here somewhere else.' What the...?!?

In my opinion you're better off sticking to the version of Armand's story told in The Vampire Lestat. Before it was stretched out because of Anne's contractual obligations of the 1990s to have two books a year for five years (one Vampire Chronicle a year and one other, which she cheated twice with her New Tales of the Vampires which were really thinly disguised Vampire Chronicles and fit in the continuity of The Vampire Chronicles.

The full The Vampire Chronicles are

Interview with the vampire (Made into a film)

The Vampire Lestat (Adapted into two different plays called Lestat)

The queen of the damned (Not to be confused with the awful film of the same name)

Tale of the body thief

Memnoch The Devil

Pandora (New Tales of the vampires. It has to be read at this point in the books because it tells you that Armand is still alive, important to know before The Vampire Armand and Lestat's comditiion and that David Talbot is now collecting the stories.)

The Vampire Armand

Vittorio the vampire (New tales of the vampires)

(At this point it's best to have read The lives if the Mayfair witches which are The witching hour, Lasher and Taltos)

Merrick (Mayfair witches cross over)

Blood an gold

Blackwood Farm (Mayfair witches cross over)

Blood Canticle (Mayfair witches cross over)

Armand, a minor figure in some of the previous Vampire Chronicles, fleshes out his backstory, filling in some of the gaps in what we know of him from the other novels. Raised a devout Eastern Orthodox Christian, a painter of ikons who is nearly sent to live in a monastery, Armand is kidnapped and ends up in the hands of the ancient vampire Marius, with whom he shares a hedonistic life of luxury. This early part of the novel, and Armand's subsequent imprisonment at the hands of the vampire Santino, are quite strong.

The last third of the novel is unfocused and confusing. I'm still not quite sure what happened to Lestat, and the fate of Armand's young friends, clearly intended to surprise us, seemed like an inevitability to me from the moment they were introduced. Anne Rice's prose is as effective and elegant as ever, and a growing concern with religion is becoming evident.

A wonderfully rich tale about Armand, a deeply spiritual vampire. Many parts of his life are glossed over too quickly, especially his years in the Paris coven. However, his early years in Venice are well-detailed, richly imagined, sensual and very entertaining.
I also enjoyed the new characters now introduced into the series, a beautiful pianist named Sybelle and an Arab boy named Benji. This story picks up where "Memnoch the Devil" left off -- same quality as Memnoch, but I liked "Pandora" better! The author again whines and wrings her hands over Christianity in this one. I hope Rice continues to write about Pandora(a pre-christian)... We shall have to wait and see...

I have loved almost everything Anne Rice has written in the past, but this book needs something more than sex. It is amazing how much homosexual activity she has packed into just the first 200 pages. It seems like she is focusing more on this part of Armand's life rather than anything else. But, if you look past that, the story is very good. Parts of the book are enthralling and impossible to put down. Fortunately those parts are often enough to make the book somewhat enjoyable. I advise picking up CRY TO HEAVEN first. Not only is it a better read, but it will prepare you for this book. I recommend this book to those with an open mind. Overall, though, it is a pretty good book.

I just finished reading "The Vampire Armand" and I find myself asking the same question I've asked at the end of the last three or four Anne Rice books. That question is, "What has happened to quality of Anne Rice's books." I've read all of her books to date and enjoyed many of her early Vampire novels. However, the most recent ones have just been bad. Sure, they are light reading. You can finish them in about six hours. They all have bright moments. But are they satisfying? No. Perhaps she is turning them out too fast. Whatever the case, "The Vampire Armand" is light years away from "Interview with a Vampire" or "The Witching Hour".

With Armand, Ann Rice gives us another masterpeice of vampire literature, and the world can now read some more about a vampire who wants to live forever by sucking people's blood and killing some animals. As in her previous work, Rice presents the world of the vampire, where the vampire wants to live forever, sucks people's blood and kills some animals. But in Armand, there is a surprising new twist ...uh...well..I guess there's really nothing new here, come to think of it. But nonetheless, the world owes a great dept to Ms. Rice, our mistress of the dark from New Orleans, for her pricelss tales of vampires who suck people's blood and kill animals so they can live forever. Bravo!

The 'autobiography' of the Vampire Armand, from his birth in Kiev Rus up to and including the events of Memnoch the Devil.
While Armand's life and history were interesting, and something I've been curious about since I read Interview with the Vampire, I was not entertained by the theological discourses Rice has seen fit to engage her characters in more and more frequently in the last couple Vampire Chronicles. Also, an odd juxtaposition, a lot of the description of Armand's sexual relationships with Marius, Bianca, and others. Overall, it was okay, and I suppose essential to the series.

... is an extremely difficult book to rate. It nearly returns to the old Anne Rice feeling towards the first part, as Armand tells the tale of his life to David Talbot. Everyone is here - Pandora, Marius, Lestat. It is absorbing, and Anne Rice is even more stunningly vivid in her writing than before, telling a tale of the ages. Yet the tale is occasionally confusing, annoyingly erotic, and towards the end, very much too religious - like her previous flop, MEMNOCH THE DEVIL. I must give the book a 4 for Rice's ability to keep me hooked through the whole thing, but it still can't compare with Anne Rice's earlier works. The ending will need to be read by Lestat worshippers, though, so pick it up - even if Armand isn't your type of vampy.

It is with hesitation that I gave this book three stars. The first part of the book is absolutely wretched and not at all what I would hope to see from Ann Rice, who I love. The issues that I see are:

1. Character inconsistentcy. I imagine Armand as a much more authoritative vampire than this whiney version. I also think it is weird to make Marius homosexual in this one and no mention of his supposed lifelong love interest, Pandora (a woman). Also, I find it odd that Marius seems to be quicker to make vampires in this book, when in past books, it has been just the opposite.

2. Endless descriptions with no point. Rice goes on and on about what Armand is learning and what things look like. But, there seems to be no plot revelance at all.

3. Misplaced homoerotica. Ok, you expect a certain amount of homosexual overtones in Rice's novels. But, I thought the explicitness of the scenes in the earlier part of the book belonged under one of her pseudonyms, not in one of her vampire novels. Because it is not fitting with rest of the novel, it causes the reader to put on his or her breaks.

The second part of the book was more like what I think of true Ann Rice, which was a relief. It was at that point that I became interested in the story. Actually, I think it was at that point a story actually begun. The first part seemed pointless.

I really did enjoy reading about how the Paris coven (aka Theatre des Vampires) began. I think that was the one part of the book that hadn't been repeated in earlier books.

The only thing that put me off in this part was Armand's endless droning about how he wanted to drink Lestat's blood. I just thought, "Oh, boo hoo."

Out of all the characters in the vampire chronicles, Armand was a mystery while Marius, next to Lestat, was one I most loved and admired. This book, while uncovering most of Armand's secrets and hidden past, has somehow made me lose interest in both of these characters. Although it had a few unexpected twists,(one which involves the night that Claudia died) it was mainly weak and without much content. Anne Rice has really done it this time. Not only did she reduce Marius to a mere pedophile, but she turned Armand into(before he was captured by the coven) an ungrateful brat. He (Armand) shows no strength of character or independent thinking whatsoever, only slaving for one master after another. I was also disgusted by the crudity and rawness that was displayed in this book. Maybe it was my misconception of perceiving Marius and Armand purely as father and son. Either way, I did not expect what this book was about to offer.

The Vampire chronicles are my favorite Anne Rice books and this book adds much to what has been written. She weaves history and facts with her fictional story so that the lines blur. One of the best books I've read this year. I'm a fan of the paranormal/supernatural in fiction and this is one of the best offerings right now. I also recommend in a somewhat similar yet very different vein, Robert Doherty's Area 51 series-- current paranormal in a complex and alarming story of things that border on the supernatural in 1998 America. His writing isn't as elegant as Rice's but the story is fast-paced and intriguing.

The Vampire chronicles are my favorite Anne Rice books and this book adds much to what has been written. She weaves history and facts with her fictional story so that the lines blur. One of the best books I've read this year. I'm a fan of the paranormal/supernatural in fiction and this is one of the best offerings right now. I also recommend in a somewhat similar yet very different vein, Robert Doherty's Area 51 series-- current paranormal in a complex and alarming story of things that border on the supernatural in 1998 America. His writing isn't as elegant as Rice's but the story is fast-paced and intriguing.

The Vampire chronicles are my favorite Anne Rice books and this book adds much to what has been written. She weaves history and facts with her fictional story so that the lines blur. One of the best books I've read this year. I'm a fan of the paranormal/supernatural in fiction and this is one of the best offerings right now. I also recommend in a somewhat similar yet very different vein, Robert Doherty's Area 51 series-- current paranormal in a complex and alarming story of things that border on the supernatural in 1998 America. His writing isn't as elegant as Rice's but the story is fast-paced and intriguing.

The Vampire chronicles are my favorite Anne Rice books and this book adds much to what has been written. She weaves history and facts with her fictional story so that the lines blur. One of the best books I've read this year. I'm a fan of the paranormal/supernatural in fiction and this is one of the best offerings right now. I also recommend in a somewhat similar yet very different vein, Robert Doherty's Area 51 series-- current paranormal in a complex and alarming story of things that border on the supernatural in 1998 America. His writing isn't as elegant as Rice's but the story is fast-paced and intriguing.