#and 4 is literally my favourite number which is totally unimportant but oh well

[pardonmydelays]

happy birthday to the man of my dreams i guess

[high-fructose-lesbianism]

A Subjective Ranking of all 18 Books in the Vampire Chronicles Extended Universe

18. Blood Canticle (2003)

It took me the longest to read Blood Canticle of any of the books because I couldn’t read more than about 25 pages at a time before the urge to throw the book out the nearest window got too strong. The story is bad, the characters are the worst they’ve ever been and the writing style is full-on terrible. Blood Canticle is one of the worst books I’ve read full stop.

17. Taltos (1994)

I hated the Mayfair Witches trilogy. While Taltos was at least the shortest of the three, it was a terrible conclusion to the trilogy. The Taltos are one of Anne Rice’s worst ideas. Each of the books delves more into their mythology and it gets worst the more it’s explored.

16. Blackwood Farm (2002)

A major issue I have with Anne Rice is she insists on telling these extremely lengthy backstories of characters we’ve just met who I almost never give a shit about. That’s the entirety of Blackwood Farm. It’s the backstory of a character I just met and don’t care about whatsoever. Blackwood Farm evokes the classic Anne Rice style of bad where it switches between just being insane and being fucking boring at the drop of a hat. I skimmed most of the book because it was so boring. But then I’d tune in to some insanely weird shit about intersex vampires or ghost twins giving handjobs or whatever was happening and yeah, my attention would of course be held by such insanity. But invariably, the book would drift back into describing wildly uninteresting events with too much detail and I’d tune out again.

15. The Witching Hour (1990)

The Witching Hour has a three paragraph summary on Wikipedia. It is an accurate summation of the events of the book. So then why is this fucking book 968 pages? That’s my main grievance with The Witching Hour; it’s way too fucking long. It’s the least insane of the Mayfair Witches trilogy but also by far the least interesting.

14. Prince Lestat and the Realms of Atlantis (2016)

These fucking bird aliens who inhabited Atlantis are just the Taltos 2.0. There’s a lot of insanity and also boring backstory in this one. I skimmed the backstory of the Atlantean bird aliens and don’t feel like I missed anything. What saves this book from ranking lower is I’m a slut for the main VC characters interacting and this one did have such a thing, plus some good Louis/Lestat moments which is my other big priority with the series. Simultaneous highlight and lowlight of this book is when that one dude looses a hand but it gains sentience, breast feeds off him or something and then becomes his perfect clone. Fucking insanity.

13. Lasher (1993)

Lasher is the best of the Mayfair trilogy because there are genuine moments of horror in this horror novel. On the downside, the Taltos are as always, insane. Also, another signature of Anne Rice’s is sexy and sexualized teenage characters which there is a lot of in this book in the form of 13 year old Mona Mayfair, her affair with Michael Curry and the many scenes where this is excused, justified or even somewhat celebrated. That disturbed me and not in the way I want a horror novel to disturb me.

12. Memnoch the Devil (1995)

In terms of writing style, Memnoch is a lot better than many of the books that will rank higher than it. But this is a subjective ranking and I didn’t give a shit about Anne Rice working through her weird, religious baggage in a series that I’m reading to hear about the exploits of sexy, bisexual vampires. The majority of this book is again, a long backstory from a character we just met and I don’t care about. In this case it’s literally Satan which is a good start but Anne Rice sure has a way of taking too long describing everything which leaves me extremely bored by the narrative.

11. Blood Paradise (2018)

Blood Paradise should be lower in this list. It’s objectively extremely poor. Blood Paradise is basically the inverse of Memnoch; I really liked the story but hated the writing style. This one only ranks so high because it is a story that focuses on the lead vampire characters who are my priority. And yeah, I liked the outline for the story. It’s character-based, no major new characters interrupt the narrative and no insane additions to canon are added. Too bad the writing style feels extremely half-assed. Where usually I’m critical of Anne Rice taking way too long to say anything and focusing on unimportant details, this one is the opposite. It feels extremely rushed. A lot of major, emotional scenes that occur between characters are only a few sentences or paragraphs long. But still, at least this one gave me story content that I could just expand upon in my head instead of insane additions to canon that I’d prefer to ignore.

10. Merrick (2000)

Merrick actually might have my favourite ending to any of the VC novels. I loved Lestat resurrecting Louis from his suicide attempt and then that descends into Lestat, Louis, David and Merrick living in what seems to be perfectly happy polyamory. I totally dug that. But of course, the majority of the book is a backstory of Merrick, a character I just met and don’t care about. Also, we get a bit of David backstory which I seem to remember being him mostly creeping on some young boy who was in expedition with him. Not ideal. 

9. Vittorio, the Vampire (1999)

Vittorio is a fairly effective historical horror. Anne Rice did a lot of research and it shows. That’s not exactly my interest but she did well with it. There’s also some really horrific moment where Vittorio meets a clan of vampires in an old castle who do keep humans like cattle and eat babies and stuff. The major downsides is just that this is a character who we’ve never met before and never see again. Also the fact that Vittorio is 16 and is absolutely sexualized. I’ve really grown tired of Anne Rice’s constant belief that’s in almost all of her writing that teenagers are sexy and it’s totally fine to fuck them. It makes me uncomfortable to say the least.

8. Pandora (1998)

This one’s just pretty good. I’ve no major complaints but no specific bits of it I want to champion either. Again, a lot of historical research is done which is not interesting to me but well done. Also nice to have at least one book with a female vampire protagonist.

7. Prince Lestat (2014)

Prince Lestat is not objectively better than the last two books. I rank it this high mostly out of relief. For ages, Blood Canticle was the last book in The Vampire Chronicles. So, when Prince Lestat was released, it was impossible to see this as anything other than a huge upgrade. And of course, I liked that this book returned to focusing on the lead characters of Lestat, Louis, Marius, Daniel etc. It’s still a baffling idea to have Lestat be the vampire head of state or whatever though. But oh man, that Louis/Lestat moment near the end of the book made me feel a whole lotta feelings.

6. Blood and Gold (2001)

This one is another excuse for Anne Rice to do a lot of historical research. And you know what? Better she spends her energies doing that instead of creating weird, tall supernatural beings with specific quirks that are impossible to take seriously. I like the framing of this one because it’s sort of the inverse of usual. Thorne, a new character is introduced but instead of him telling Marius his story, it’s established character Marius who tells Thorne his story. And he does this the first day they met after Thorne’s awakened after several hundred years and they’ve taken a bath together. That’s just good story structure right there. The most memorable part of this story for me is keeping a vague tally of all the people Marius fell in love with throughout the course of the story. In one 100-page stretch, Marius falls in love five separate times. This grew tiresome but I also just thought it was funny.

5. The Vampire Armand (1998)

I’m the most morally against The Vampire Armand. It’s basically the peak of Anne Rice’s love of sexualizing teens. That’s sort of the whole book. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that around the time of its publication, Anne Rice got back into religion. I think she looked over what she wrote and was like yeah okay, maybe I do need Jesus. But I dunno, I remember really liking it. It was well-written and Armand is one of my favourite characters. I think Anne Rice did actually hit the right mixture of the story being sexy, horrific and rather tragic. Also, that bit at the end where Armand eats a drug dealer’s face and heart in front of some new, human friends is one of my favourite scenes.

4. The Tale of the Body Thief (1992)

There’s a lot of good and a lot of bad in Tale of the Body Thief. I love the body swap aspect and this one has some of the best interactions between characters. On the downside, there absolutely is a 2-page description of Lestat taking a piss, he absolutely commits a rape and him turning David into a vampire was #problematic. But even there, the Lestat and David scene is really well-written and works because Lestat is an absolute piece of shit. Tale of the Body Thief is for better and worse, Lestat at his most Lestat. Still didn’t need to hear about him taking a piss in that much detail, though.

3. Queen of the Damned (1988)

Akasha is the only good villain in any of the Vampire Chronicles books. Plus, Queen of the Damned brought all the characters we’d met in the previous two books together and I was absolutely all about that. At this point in the series, I actually did care about the majority of main characters and their interactions were absolutely spectacular. Only downside is again, we get a lengthy backstory of Akasha that I absolutely skimmed.

2. Interview with the Vampire (1976)

Yeah, it’s only number 2. Because while this book is better written and the start of this whole damn phenomenon, Louis is far from my favourite narrator. Dude’s too morose and shit. Still, the writing style is exquisite and it introduced great characters. As the series went on, Anne Rice clearly ran out of ideas but because this one is the first book, that’s not the case. There’s a lot of ideas here and they aren’t even fucking insane. 

1. The Vampire Lestat (1985)

I’m really only into this series because of how much I love Lestat as a character. I read Interview and thought I was done with the series. Interview was fine but I didn’t think I cared about the sequels. However, six months later when I decided to read The Vampire Lestat, I knew within the first two pages that this was going to be a problem for me. This is exactly my brand of bullshit. It’s just Lestat being a sexy and shitty person who makes out with everyone and overreacts to everything. I love him. And in the third act when it’s revealed he’s been in love with Louis all along and then Louis shows up in the present day and they reunite???? Oh my god. 16 year-old me nearly exploded. The Vampire Lestat is really the sole reason The Vampire Chronicles happened to me as hard as it did. I love this book and its ridiculous narrator/protagonist.