In her latest bewitching volume 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 - who appeared as the flamboyant leader of the Théatre des Vampires in Interview with the Vampire.

Armand begins his story against the dark, dramatic backdrop of the New Orleans convent where Lestat still lies in Endymion-like sleep. The first memories he can conjure up are brutal ones - of himself as a boy, filthy and degraded, on a slave ship bound from Constantinople for Renaissance Venice. There in a magnificent palazzo he becomes the catamite and pupil of a rich, reclusive artist - Marius, the greatest vampire of them all. Later, in a duel with an English lord, Armand receives a fatal wound, from which only Marius's dark gift can save him. Near death, he relives memories of an earlier, half-forgotten childhood in Kiev in Russia - a city under
Mongol domination - and of Constantinople, where Tartar raiders sold him into slavery.

The novel rises in a glorious crescendo, moving though scenes of luxury and decadence, of ambush, fire and devil worship to nineteenth-century Paris and finally to present-day New Orleans. Summoned there by the playing of impassioned music and visions of lost childhood, Armand, the eternally vulnerable and romantic hero, is forced to choose between his twilight immortality and the salvation of his immortal soul. Teeming with richness, sensuality and light, The Vampire Armand weaves an extraordinary powerful spell, building to a climax and a thrilling moment of epiphany in the convent in New Orleans.

The Vampire Armand ~ Chatto & Windus 1998 (UK)

 

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.

The Vampire Armand ~ Knopf 1998 (US)