#anne rice vampire lestat fan club

[prettyhopemachine]

[manichewitz]

i dont think yall understand how floored i was when i found out that the interview with the vampire books are actually incredibly erotically gay for real and not just light queercoding or fan's gay ships?? bc this changes everything. i had always assumed anne rice hated fanfic authors for making her male characters fuck, but no, she just wanted to be the only author making her male characters fuck

[sam-reid]

Ugh I hate it when people talk trash about Anne Rice. She created the story, she wrote bestsellers, she changed the vampire genre forever. And then you have people constantly complaining how bad the books are and how terrible she was. I know the story can get weird, she had her flaws and it's not everyone's taste. Fine. But why are they reading it and claiming to be fans/experts if they hate it so much? It is so annoying and disrespectful.

obviously no one is above criticism, and she's said some questionable things, but anne was also just a regular person with faults, like the rest of us.

the thing that boils my blood is how unapologetically vile people can be about her in one breath, when they claim to adore her characters and her story with the next. her work was transformative and ground-breaking, and the vampire genre wouldn't be what it is now if not for her. her books have been an escape for generations of people who felt like outsiders; for the queer community, for the kink community, for the goth kids, for those of us who connect with lestat, louis, armand, gabrielle... it's why there are still yearly balls in new orleans, organised by the official vampire lestat fan club. it's why annes' name (and lestats') is referenced in so many shows and movies. it's why she's synonymous with the idea of the brooding melancholic vampire, and celebrated by such a wide variety of people.

without her words, this show we all love would never have existed. and they can both co-exist without diminishing each other's importance.

but the internet has fostered a lack of basic human empathy, and people are cruel.

[retiredkat]

New York Times Interview with Ben Daniels. Farewell Santiago, you marvelous bastard!

‘Interview With the Vampire’: Ben Daniels on That Bloody Season 2 Finale

“He has an energy that’s fun to hate,” the British actor said of his swaggering vampire character in AMC’s series-length Anne Rice adaptation.

June 30, 2024

A man in a gray shirt and striped trousers stands posed as another man comes up behind him

Ben Daniels, left, and Jacob Anderson in the season finale of “Interview With the Vampire.”Larry Horricks/AMC

This interview contains spoilers for the Season 2 finale of “Interview With the Vampire.”

Until his time in AMC’s “Interview With the Vampire” was cut short — along with his head — in the Season 2 finale, Santiago was the toast of the vampiric theater scene.

Played by the British actor Ben Daniels, himself an Olivier Award-winning veteran of the stage, Santiago was a dashing and devilish performer at the Théâtre des Vampires, in postwar Paris. Formerly known as Francis, a failed English actor, Santiago transformed himself into an underworld dandy after becoming a bloodsucker — and took a cooler-sounding name — rarely seen without a vampiress on each arm and a theatrically hateful twinkle in his eye.

“He’s so awful and delicious at the same time!” Daniels said in a video interview last week. “And it’s his relish of it as well, his glee. He just loves being a vampire.”

Daniels added: “He has an energy that’s fun to hate.”

Unfortunately for Santiago, the show’s title vampire was his hater-in-chief. Over the course of Season 2, which concluded on Sunday, Santiago seized control of the theater troupe, which turned out to be a coven of vampires in disguise. At the season’s climax, Santiago staged a mock trial that ended with the real execution-by-sunlight of Claudia (Delainey Hayles) and her companion, Madeleine (Roxane Duran). It was for this crime that Santiago lost his head to their father figure, the vampire Louis (Jacob Anderson), in the finale.

Based on the novels of Anne Rice’s Vampire Chronicles series, the AMC show, created and overseen by Rolin Jones, has already been renewed for a third season. But Daniels doesn’t feel too bad that his character won’t live to see Season 3. Santiago had it coming given his bad behavior — particularly by the end.

“If you didn’t want him dead before,” Daniels said, “you certainly do then.”

These are edited excerpts from the conversation.

If you’re an ex-high school drama club goth who loved “The Rocky Horror Picture Show,” Santiago is a very magnetic figure. In the show, he even has fans who attend every performance and dress up in character.

“Rocky Horror” was a big influence, “Rocky Horror” and “Cabaret.” I’m so glad Tim Curry’s performance in “The Rocky Horror Show” exists onscreen because it’s one of the best performances ever. I would’ve loved to have seen that in the theater.

I was curious if there was a David Bowie influence, too.

Yes! Santiago gets more and more nihilistic as it goes on, and I thought, it’s so Thin White Duke — that awful cocaine coldness. I just sent Carol Cutshall, the costume designer, endless pictures of Bowie as the Thin White Duke. If you compare, she completely replicated it. Then she added a see-through shirt, which is genius.

As a screen presence, Santiago needs that kind of ammo. He has to hold his own with the “big four” members of the show’s emotional quadrangle, Louis, Lestat [Sam Reid], Claudia and Armand [Assad Zaman], even though he’s not romantically or emotionally involved with any of them.

[Smiling] Is he not?

Well, well, well!

This was one of the first jobs I’ve ever done sight unseen, just because it meant working with Rolin. From the outset, Rolin called up and said, “Listen, are you OK if we don’t make Santiago queer?” I was like, “Yeah, I can sort of see it.”

But as the script started to come in, I thought the only way this level of vitriol that he has works is if he’s in love with Armand. There is this extraordinary psychological term called reaction formation, which is what Iago has for Othello. It’s a defense mechanism whereby your impulses are so unacceptable to your ego that they’re replaced by this opposite, exaggerated behavior.

Santiago finds Louis incredibly attractive. Because Armand killed Santiago’s maker — who I think he was in love with too — and also finds Louis attractive, the whole thing must be destroyed. It gave such a drive to his hatred. It was just something ruminating in myself that drove him forward in a very aggressive, mad, extreme way.

You’re not just a human playing a vampire playing a human playing a vampire. You’re also a stage actor playing a stage actor.

When we shot the majority of the theater stuff in Episode 2, I’d been doing “Madea” for three months on the West End. I finished on a Sunday, and on Wednesday or Thursday I was shooting that whole sequence. So I was already primed when Levan [the director of Episode 2, Levan Akin] said: “Do it like a theatrical performance. We’ll take care of everything.” They filmed everything wide with four cameras, so we didn’t know when we were on and when we weren’t. You just had to keep at it. It was relentless, and he shot it brilliantly.

In Episode 7, just before Claudia dies, being on that stage was like doing a play. We shot that courtroom sequence in 15-minute chunks. They were insane. A lot of the time there were no cameras onstage with us. They were either on cranes, so they were sweeping in and out, or it would only be Emma [the director of Episode 7, Emma Freeman] shooting, doing all the close coverage first so you get these fresh performances immediately, not at the end of three days or whatever. Then all the cameras went away, so you never saw them again. It became like a play.

Is it tricky, as an actor, to play an actor with a … different level of talent?

Poor old Francis. Yes, he’s never achieved the giddy heights that he would like to have. He’s a big old show pony, isn’t he? Basically, I was like a magpie, looking at everything from Vincent Price in “Theater of Blood” — well, Vincent Price in lots of things, actually — to my cat. I would watch how my cat plays with mice, and I was like: You know what? I’m going to steal a bit of that.

Had you ever wanted to play a vampire?

Yes, absolutely. I love horror. It’s what I live for. I grew up watching Christopher Lee as Dracula, and William Marshall as Prince Mamuwalde in “Blacula.” Very debonair, theatrical, that rich voice. I’ve watched those vampires as long as I can remember.

I’ve always adored horror. Kids that are outsiders often do. Growing up as a queer kid, those villains, like the vampires, are often how people treat gay people. It’s always there, that queer coding. In those old James Whale movies, it’s there. It’s written into them.

More than any other writer, Anne Rice identified the tragedy within the monstrousness of the vampire. They are immortal, but the people they love can still die, and that experience stays with them literally forever.

Part of the reason I can’t watch “Vampire” at the moment is my partner just died. The resonances are huge at the moment. Grief is a [expletive] beast. It’s like being mugged in broad daylight, and you never know when it’s going to hit you. She explores all that brilliantly.

I think in any kind of creative job, you are like a sponge. You soak up what is happening to you, or in the world, and sometimes it bleeds out, and it’s useful. We were shooting “Vampire” when Ian [his partner, the actor Ian Gelder] was first diagnosed [with lung cancer; Gelder was later diagnosed with bile duct cancer, from which he died last month]. When I started watching Episode 2, I know what was going on in my life fed into it — of course it would, when you’re telling a story about death and dying and killing people and living forever. I watched it; I knew the conversations I was having between takes … It is too much at the moment. It’s too close to home.

But [eventually], I will be able to see what I was going through with Ian, even in the anger I have with other characters. I know it will have informed it in some way, but I hope in a good way.

What I am enjoying is people’s reactions to it, without actually watching it. Rolin called me up and said: “Just Google yourself. Search ‘Ben Daniels Santiago’ on Twitter. Look at people’s reactions if you’re not going to watch it.” So I’ve been living through people reacting to it, which has been great.

[toscrollperchancetomeme]

Is there a life after IwtV Season 2?

So, Interview with the Vampire Season 2 is over, you have already rewatched it a dozen times and don’t know what to do with yourself?

Here’s a list of suggestions!

Read the books

I might be biased because I have been a fan since the early 2000s, but they are genuinely worth a read. A lot of people struggle especially with the first book, which I understand – but you can absolutely skip it and start right away with The Vampire Lestat! Especially The Vampire Lestat and Queen of the Damned are a great read and they are what is coming up next in the show. A lot of the plot of QotD happens at the same time as The Vampire Lestat, so I expect that material from both books will come up in the next season.

If you have a brain that enjoys audio books, they are actually available for free on youtube (though the narrator pronounces Louis’ name wrong). The version on the commercial audio book platforms read by Simon Vance is better though, if that’s an option for you. :)

The books after that are very much a mixed bag, but they all have some great and some downright crazy stuff in them, because Anne Rice’s writing was pretty unhinged at times. It’s a ride, but imho one worth taking.

Watch reaction videos on YouTube

I think I have by now watched all reactions that are available. For me it really brings a lot of joy to relive the experience of a first-time watch by proxy. Some are frustrating because people talk over important dialogue, some hold genuine galaxy brain moments by people who know nothing of the material. I will not recommend anyone, because vibes vary for everyone, but I’m sure there’s a reactor out there that YOU will vibe with.

Watch other shows/movies with the actors

Did you know that “Talk Radio”, written by and starring Eric Bogosian is available in full on youtube? I haven’t watched it yet, but I hear it’s really good.

For Sam Reid, I can’t recommend “Lambs of God” highly enough, and I hear great things about The Newsreader, which I sadly can’t get my hands on at the moment. “Belle” is also a beautiful movie, but his part is rather small as far as I remember.

Then of course there’s Hotel Portofino for Assad (but I’m not yet that desperate).

I actually haven’t watched anything with Jacob Anderson except Game of Thrones, which I will NOT rewatch, so I’m happy for suggestions there!

Watch the movies that have been namedropped by Rolin Jones

Hedwig and the Angry Inch – a phenomenal movie and stage show in its own right. It’s fun, it’s beautiful, it’s queer as fuck, the music is excellent and it’s an absolute must-watch.

Rocky Horror Picture Show – honestly, if you have never seen this movie, what are you waiting for?

The Dirt – Rolin Jones has mentioned the book, but there was actually a pretty decent movie made about Mötley Crüe a few years ago, that I really enjoyed.

Also, I have seen Amadeus mentioned several times, I’m not sure if that came up in an interview but it’s an excellent movie and the parallels to the relationship between Lestat and Armand are definitely there.

Honorary mention: Fight Club, not because anyone has mentioned it but… the parallels warrant an essay that I might one day have to write. (Themes: Queerness of male on male violence, imaginary boyfriends, idealization of toxic masculinity)

Read the books from Rolin Jones' reading list

I have now spent 10 minutes googling for that interview where he lists the books he’s reading for Season 3, but can’t find it. Someone please drop it in the comments?

Learn French

Want to feel closer to your favorite actors? Why not go through the same hell as them and get bullied by the Duolingo owl while at it? ❤

Discord servers

I’m not active there right now, but I have found several fandom servers that seem like great communities.

Read Fanfic

Honestly the reason this is down here is because it’s so obvious. :)

Get creative

Write fanfic, draw fan art, roleplay, edit videos, make unhinged memes!

And always: Support the content creators!

Everytime I scroll the tag I see new creators entering the fandom and let me tell you, after almost 20 years of drought, I am overjoyed. Same goes for fic writers, youtube reactors and reviewers! Leave them a like, a comment or whatever is available on the platform they are using.

Edit:

Watch the musical!

I completely forgot! There’s a Lestat musical by Elton John. Yes, you read that right. This lovely YouTube account has full bootlegs for you to enjoy some camp broadway fun!

[seraphtrevs]

Since I’m a huge fan of your writing, I’m curious: who are some your favorite writers and what are some of your favorite books or short stories??

Oh man, I've done so much reading over my life that it's hard to narrow down. Like I'm for sure going to leave people out.

For fiction: some of my favorite authors are the Bronte sisters (slight preference for Charlotte - Jane Eyre was one of my first loves and hugely shaped me as a reader and a writer), Daphne du Maurier (favorite of her books - Rebecca), Sarah Waters (can't decide between Fingersmith and The Paying Guests), Angela Carter (The Bloody Chamber), Susanna Clarke (Jonathon Strange and Mr Norell), Toni Morrison (Beloved), Robin Hobb (the Farseer trilogy and Fitz's further adventures, but I've heard good things about the Liveship Trader books!), Terry Pratchett (the Tiffany Aching books are particular favorites), and Anne Rice (well, depending on the book tbh, she's not very consistent lol - the first three Vampire Chronicle books are my favs from her), with special shout-outs to Robin McKinley (Beauty), Avi (The True Confession of Charlotte Doyle), LM Montgomery (Anne of Green Gables), Frank L Baum (I have read every single Oz book - there are a ton of them!) and Madeleine L'Engle (A Wrinkle in Time), who were my favs when I was a kid (along with the Babysitter's Club book lol - but they're mostly ghostwritten so I'm not sure who to credit!)

Right now, I'm re-reading (for the millionth time) The Bloody Chamber by Angela Carter, which is a collection of fairy tale retellings - but that feels like a really inadequate way to describe it. It's very visceral, primal, and poetic. My favorite story from the collection is "The Bloody Chamber," which is a Bluebeard retelling. Bluebeard is one of my favorite fairy tales, but it understandably doesn't get a lot of adaptation. (I'm very curious what Disney's Bluebeard would look like lmao)

I'm also listening to the audiobook of The Vampire Lestat, which is the reason that Anne Rice is on that list. She really lost me with her later books, but listening to TVL reminded me that actually, she can be very good! She really excels at evocative descriptions and conveying emotion - she's very shameless, in a good way. A woman who always writes with her entire pussy, whatever else you might say about her.

But I actually read more nonfiction than fiction. I'm a big fan of memoirs - not celebrity memoirs (although Jennette McCurdy's I'm Glad My Mom Died was probably my favorite book I've read this year), but memoirs that are more about someone grappling with the human experience - like, sometimes the author has been through something horrible and they've done a lot of mediation on what they've been through, or sometimes the author is just a very astute and entertaining observer of their own (and other people's) ridiculousness. Some of my favorites are Mary Karr, Caroline Knapp, David Sedaris, Cheryl Strayed, Jeanette Walls, Tara Westover, and Allie Brosh.

If I had to pick one to recommend - all of David Sedaris's books are extremely funny. He writes humorous personal essays, so I guess his books aren't really memoirs exactly (google says he's a humorist), but he usually writes about himself so I'm lumping him in this category lol. Me Talk Pretty One Day is a good place to start with his stuff - you will cry laughing.

I also love pop science and pop history - Mary Roach is a super approachable science writer with a quirky sense of humor. Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers is so funny and candid - she asks every question you've ever had about dead bodies and then some. I also love Bill Bryson - another very accessible and funny writer - I really loved his A Short History of Nearly Everything, which covers exactly what it says. I ADORE Oliver Sacks - he was a neurologist who wrote so movingly about what it means to be human through the experiences of his patients - The Man Who Mistook His Wife For a Hat reads more like a book of short stories, and I weep like a baby every time I read it (I actually started tearing up thinking of a few cases.) (Btw he's also written beautiful memoirs but I like his science writing best so I'm putting him here. Bill Bryson has written memoir too.) Carl Sagan is also approachable and humane - This Demon Haunted World is my favorite of his. Andrew Solomon's The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression is required reading for anyone who's dealt with mental illness, although it's difficult and painful at times (his Far From the Tree: Parents, Children, and the Search for Identity is also really good, but also difficult and painful - but worth it!)Diane Ackerman's A Natural History of the Senses has gorgeous prose and is a great book for artists and writers imo - it gets you thinking deeply about how we interact with the world.

For history, I am obsessed with this book called "The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity by David Graeber and David Wengrow - it will completely upend everything you think you know about the history of homo sapians. Mike Duncan got his start podcasting - his series Revolutions is about major world revolutions and is essentially like listening to an audiobook, so it's not a surprise his books are pretty fun too. Sarah Vowell has some really fun books about quirky historical topics - her Assassination Vacation is great (she goes on a roadtrip to visit locations in America where famous assassinations took place).

And here are a few other miscellaneous non-fiction writers I enjoy - Sebastian Junger (just finished his In My Time of Dying about his near death experience - super thought-provoking - but it was A Perfect Storm that made me love him), Hunter S. Thompson (Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas), Jon Krakauer (Into the Wild), Jon Ronson (The Psychopath Test: A Journey Through the Madness Industry)

This was a fun question to think about! I hadn't realized I had such a strong preference for female writers until I actually listed all my favs out, which is an interesting thing to know about myself, so thanks for asking!

[elisaintime]

Hi, I love your vampire reviews! Since you’re an expert in Anne Rice, have you heard anything about the supposed memorial celebration that was supposed to happen in New Orleans? I’ve been checking the Facebook page occasionally & signed up for the e-mail updates. But it feels like it was announced like 2 years ago & there’s been no further info? I completely understand Christopher isn’t obligated to throw a party for the fans. I know her family’s been organizing her substantial collection and grieving privately. But I do wish I had an idea of what they’re planning.

Really, I love NOLA street parties, & would be thrilled just to meet up with fellow fans!

Nope, there is no new news regarding that, unfortunately. I really hope it still ends up happening! During the weekend of the 2022 vampire ball, a second line memorial parade was held, and I walked in it with all my friends who'd come for the ball along with hundreds of other fans. They asked us to dress in Victorian mourning style and there was a band, and we marched through the Garden District waving lace handkerchiefs. We stopped to have a moment of silence by her 1st street house, and the parade ended at the bookshop where she liked to do all her signings. Christopher wasn't there for that, and it was all organized by the fan club (same people who host the ball).

If you like NOLA parties though, and want to meet up with fellow fans, I highly recommend trying to get tickets for this year's Anne Rice Vampire Lestat Fan Club Vampire Ball (not to be confused with other vampire balls happening that same weekend). It happens Halloween weekend. It looks like tickets are going to be much more limited this year than they were in the past few years, so keep your eye on the ARVLFC social media so you can snag tickets before they're all sold out! I've been going every year since they came back after Covid, and it's always amazing!

[anoramactir]

book recs! tagged by @rosenfey & @jennystahl. blows kisses to both of you <3 i'll tag @a-treides, @katsigian, @dekarios, @shellibisshe, @devilbrakers, and @frankensteined.

last book you read. the salt grows heavy by cassandra khaw.

horror/fantasy, kind of a little mermaid retelling? i had mixed feelings about it. there was definitely an interesting plot in there, but i thought it was bogged down by purple prose. felt more like a challenge to write the prettiest sentences possible - and there were v lovely lines! - than a story at times.

book you recommend. fight club by chuck palahniuk.

hard q, but i went with this one because i feel like the reputation the movie + it's fans have makes people avoid it. i could repeat all the soundbites about it being a brilliant satire & criticque of toxic masculinity (especially if you read the narrator as closeted) but tbh... i'm reccing it because i think it's fun. that's really it.

book you couldn't put down. bunny by mona awad.

disclaimer: i've seen this one hyped as the weirdest shit you'll ever read in your life but i didn't think it was that weird. lower your expectations. i did like it enough to finish in three days, though. idk what to say about it that won't spoil the plot— kinda heathers meets frankenstein? more eerie than scary.

book you've read twice or more. the queen's thief series by megan whalen turner.

society if this was the old school ya fantasy that blew up on booktok instead of shatter me: ☀️🌊🌳 i read this one back in high school and it rewired my brain permanently. attolia irene is the only girlboss that matters. i come back to it every few years (rereading book 4 now) & i think it still holds up.

book on your tbr. last call at the hotel imperial by deborah cohen.

it's a non-fiction about a group of reporters that covered ww2. i picked it up randomly at a bookstore because the cover was pretty, lol.

book you've put down. the priory of the orange tree by samantha shannon.

i know i'd love it if i finished but it's just so long. 😭 i've tried like three times and i always lose steam about halfway through. at this point i'll finish it by 2050.

book on your wishlist. hollow places by christopher hadley.

ambie actually recced this to me ages ago and i've been dying to read it. it sounds so interesting! but it's not available as an ebook or at my library, and i'm banned from buying physical books until i get through my stupidly tall tbr stack. one day.

favorite book from your childhood. howl's moving castle by diana wynne jones.

nobody is surprised. it's probably my favorite book of all time. a+ vibes, characters, romance, everything. i own three copies and refuse to get rid of any. if i could find an autographed version, i'd own four.

book you would give a friend. interview with the vampire by anne rice.

i need you all to become obsessed with lestat & louis and then watch the amc series so it gets renewed for season 3. please & thank you.

book of poetry or lyrics you own. time is a mother by ocean vuong.

haven't read it yet, but i've heard great things!

nonfiction book you own. girl sleuth: nancy drew and the women who created her by melanie rehak.

goes into the creation of nancy drew & how it evolved through the years, especially how it was shaped by the original ghostwriter and the daughter of the creator, and their decades-long beef with each other. i came out of it with a parasocial grudge against a woman who died in 1982.

what you're currently reading. a conspiracy of kings by megan whalen turner.

book 4 of the queen's thief series. crown prince sophos has been kidnapped and sold into slavery and it's all very dramatic.

what you're planning on reading next. moby dick by herman melville.

i've never gotten around to this one and i feel like i have to eventually. there's a 75% chance i'll get sidetracked and pick up something totally different, though.

[immortalsarcasm]

Decor details: Framed guitar pick for The Vampire Lestat World Tour 1985.

( This was part of the welcome package for the Anne Rice Vampire Lestat Fan Club when I joined several years back. )

[poet-to-none]

I've been recently tagged on twitter (by one of those Vampire Chronicles fans I've gotten interested in Medieval Daddy)

. . .and I found myself over by the Anne Rice Book Club, pondering their prompt 'What does Magnus represent, in TVL (specifically excluding later, as in Prince Lestat)'

And this is such a pivotal question in a way, because Magnus IS different ON ANOTHER LEVEL within the original Vampire Chronicles characters, and yet . . .NOT in the way people usually offer first (you know what this is -he's boner killingly ugly - which actually don't ever say or imply that directly, I will remember - ANYWAY -)

I would argue Magnus represents the essential spirit of Anne's vampires, as a whole, but his purpose is also to represent the darker, literary inspired versions of the vampires before hers. He's a meeting of both these themes, as well as a beautifully fitting triangle of horror, mystery, and folklore fairytale.

Why I say this is (@)medievalfantasyqueen, by researching older posts in the fandom, found reference to the short story Count Magnus.

I read it in full, and the namesake, the mood of enigma, terror, and otherworldliness, all translates. But it's probably not Anne's only inspiration!*

Anne is establishing all the traits of her vampires in Magnus, to that point. Which is pretty brilliant.

She establishes vampires can become very ugly by their standard of upkeep and also reverse after a good feeding (or sometimes several).*

She establishes they can lose lucidity. And will delve further into it in the Coven of Satan.

She establishes what mortals fear about vampires, if in full intensity, their movements, their lack of breathing (unless choosing to), their striking eyes and pale skin, their overpowering strength and invulnerability to physical force.

She establishes that they are also romantic in their connection to whom they feed from, nothing held back to circumstance. Magnus, even in his worst state, in the least easy encounter, gives unspeakable pleasure to Lestat.

Lastly, she really establishes the loneliness of her vampires in Magnus. And their craving to bring to themselves a fledgling that embodies what they love and value.

As the balance of the night shifts, as Lestat experiences all that lies in Magnus blood, Lestat loves him.

And I think the reason for this love, the reason Magnus and Lestat have similarities and compatibility, is fully there, but isn't force fed to the reader, or outlined. It's in the hints, unravelling forward for the rest of the book. *If you'd have more to add on that, be it familiar or niche vampire literature, comment!!!

*This is an arc Lestat follows twice, a long version in Interview With A Vampire and a short version in The Vampire Lestat itself, prior to his meeting with Marius

[thenightling]

Homophobia and absolutely no gaydar (Dracula related)

  I had to remove someone from my Horror Comics Facebook group for some blatant homophobia.    I guess they (yet again) forgot who created that group...  

They also went in a weird tangent about how straight Count Dracula is...  Apparently pissed off because I mentioned that Marvel's Dracula is confirmed as pan now. Many literary experts believe the character of Renfield was a reflection of Stoker's guilt for being attracted to Henry Irving (The actor who inspired Dracula's look in the novel).      The German production of Frank Wildhorn's Dracula the musical had grooms beside brides.     The 1936 film Daughter of Dracula was as gay as it could be despite the Hayes code.   It was so gay that a night club was opened in San Francisco named Dracula's Daughter in honor of the non-straight nature of that movie.  The song "Fresh Blood" in Dracula the musical has Dracula literally announce he wants Jonathan Harker and Mina. "You and your Mina, you'll live forever..."    Dracula was also interested in a man in Boom Comics Dracula: In the Company of Monsters (2011) where he stalked the male protagonist the way he does women in most films.    Steven Moffat's Dracula is bisexual. Dario Argento's Dracula (2012) was bisexual, according to the director.       There is a deleted scene from 1992's Bram Stoker's Dracula indicating that Renfield thought Dracula would be his lover but he "Lost him to that pretty woman."    The 2004 Dracula the musical has "The master's song reprise" where Dracula is literally inches from kissing Renfield on the mouth.    Jerry Dandridge (who was confirmed as secretly being Dracula in the Fright Night 1985 novelization) had a live-in male "companion" in the original movie.     Marvel's Dracula is not the only one that had male and female lovers.    I can't imagine being THAT oblivious and having that low of a gaydar as to think Dracula was ever straight...       It reminds me of when I was in an Anne Rice fan group on Yahoo back in the 90s and a Louis fan couldn't accept that Anne Rice's vampires aren't straight.   I got an angry caplocked "MY PRINCE CHARMING IS STRAIGHT!!!" in response to a post where I pointed out that Lestat and Louis were lovers...  Universal Studios forbid scenes of Bela Lugosi biting men because they felt the character was already "too gay".  But yeah, sure, buddy, you go and convince yourself Dracula was straight this whole time.    Wait until he finds out about Carmilla. Or Dracula's son being bi in Castlevania (Netflix series).

[blueiight]

every single thing i learn about anne wrt to race is just-

didn't she write blood canticle in the 2000s. writing over 40 years and learning nothing where race is concerned. because i know for a fact she wasn't making a critique of racism

ya blood canticle was published in 03 & it has to be one the funniest books in existence. my insane theory w zero basis in reality for why it ended up the way it did was bc anne rice caught a rap song on the radio somehow and freaked out at the thought of lestat not being in vogue so it spawned lestat suddenly being mr. talk like a gangsta look like an angel here and here only. (anybody reminded of a mr steve harvey ‘think like a lady act like a man’ or is it just me). + it certainly makes some sense for the charas who used the m—— word in the story n in the context of that scene to use it but nobody on god’s green earth should think mrs rice was using these characters as literary devices to discuss the pigmentocracy in the black communities in the us south like hell naw😂😂😂😂😂 at best what the chronicles posit on race in the story is a fixation on the ~exotic~ savage frontiers whether its new orleans thru the narrative of a slaver turned struggle vamp protagonist of interview, or the world these barbies trapieze , with characters like david talbot, gabrielle ‘exploring’ the african ‘frontier’, the legendaric myths of twmbk w/ teshkanmun , marius, pandora, all those og vamps & the underlying, repeated myth in qotd/tobt nall implying mixing ‘’bloods’’’ could end racism. (with the implicit denial of darker skin in this immortal fanci club, as most of the cast r white skinned vamps). like thats prolly as ‘good’ as the books got on race imo over 50 yrs. i dont expect the geriatric white lady writing self indulgent vampires to be king of the black people, we’d be lucky if she was racially conscious even, nor do i expect these immortal evil characters to be racially conscious but the fans tended to have such a fear factor in talking anything outside of their very insular tandom at least b4 the show came out. i rmbr some black creative in 20-21 on twt like made a brief mention on how the fandom that arose out of the iwtv movie + book/s set a precedent for later vampire stories glorifying the antebellum period & they came for that poor soul heavy. and for what?

[teemoonley]

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[funtheysaid]

TTPD is about IWTV

(Part Three)

This is a thread connecting Anne Rice’s The Vampire Chronicles to Taylor Swift’s most recent album, The Tortured Poet’s Department. Part One will be linked at the bottom, if you want to start from the beginning.

5.) So Long, London

I think this song perfectly encapsulates the feeling of bidding adieu to someone, and someplace, you once loved. Sometimes the location where you fell in love, even more so than the person whom you fell in love with, can dredge up memories you’d rather forget.

Louis leaves New Orleans after his time with Lestat, losing a city he loves and a man he loves.

“I didn't opt in to be your odd man out”

“I founded the club she's heard great things about”

“Just how low did you think I’d go ‘fore I’d self-implode? ‘Fore I’d have to go be free”

“And I'm just getting color back into my face, I'm just mad as hell cause I loved this place”

6.) But Daddy I Love Him

Another song that could be interpreted in multiple ways. I could see myself screaming “But Daddy I Love Him” about Armand, Lestat, Marius, hell, even fucking Daniel. It seems Anne Rice has a penchant for writing morally gray characters that my father would not want me to bring home.

But I think I’m going to go ahead and assign this one to our resident protagonist, Louis Du Pointe Du Lac.

Louis, especially in the AMC tv show, is the character who has to face the most judgment and prejudice. He’s constantly having to deal with uppity racists and homophobes, and I think he deserves this song just so he can tell them all to FUCK OFF! LET HIM LIVE DAMMIT!

“Clutchin' their pearls, sighing, What a mess"

“I just learned these people try and save you ‘cause they hate you”

“Running with my dress unbuttoned, scrеamin', but, Daddy, I love him”

“I'm havin' his baby”

“No, I'm not, but you should see your faces”

“I'll tell you something right now”

“I'd rather burn my whole life down”

“Than listen to one more second of all this bitchin' and moanin”

“You ain't gotta pray for me”

“Me and my wild boy and all of this wild joy”

Part One: https://www.tumblr.com/funtheysaid/749134183115456512/ttpd-is-about-iwtv

Part Four: https://www.tumblr.com/funtheysaid/749134914698543104/ttpd-is-about-iwtv

[therefugeofbooks]

July felt like an eternity! I made good use of the time, though, and finished a book with 600 pages! I haven't been reading big books so I'm glad I didn't dfn it. Overall, July was a mix of lightheaded reads and some dark ones.

Talking about all the books I read in July under the cut!

Hide and Seeker by Daka Hermon

Spooky! I liked the concept of the story, and the execution was pretty good. I can't get tired of kids saving the day and fighting the monsters and their fears. I was pleasantly surprised by all the turns the story takes and the end as well.

Read if you want: middle-grade horror, kids saving the day, a harmless play turned dark.

The Misadventures of an Amateur Naturalist by Ceinwen Langley (x)

I didn't like the first part of the book because of the pacing and lack of the magic and romance I was hoping for, but the second part is great! See my complete review of this book here.

Lady Killer Vol. 2 by Joëlle Jones and Laura Allred (x)

It's super fun! I loved the thriller and dangers that came with Josie's new situation and was shocked at the end! I'm even more curious to see where the story will head now.

Catherine House by Elisabeth Thomas

I loved the gothic atmosphere of the story, the seclusion, the cult things, the mysterious deaths. The dark academia vibes are on point! Nevertheless, I didn't feel hooked up in the mystery, and I didn't particularly care for the main character.

The Queer Principles of Kit Webb by Cat Sebastian

Oh, this was lovely! I loved the romance, the characters, and their backgrounds, and all the action of it. I liked the plot twists and the ending was really sweet.

Read if you want: adult mlm romance, historical fiction, planned thefts.

The Chosen and the Beautiful by Nghi Vo

It's been a long time since I read The Great Gatsby, so I vaguely recall what happened to compare with this book. Anyway, I liked that the protagonist is a Vietnamese girl and all her inner conflicts. The magic and its repercussions on the world were interesting, but I was not that interested in the story. Apart from Jordan, I thought the characters were annoying and didn't care for their conflicts. Also, the magic is sl fascinating but in was not a major focus.

Prince Lestat and the Realms of Atlantis by Anne Rice (x) (x)

So, I think I disliked it less than Prince Lestat because many things happen in this book. But I'm baffled by the new additions to the vampire lore. The consequences to the vampire as individuals are interesting, at least. I'm glad Lestat and Louis had a moment, in the beginning, to talk things through and are on good terms again.

Sasaki and Miyano Vol. 2 and Vol. 3 by Shou Harusono

The romance is super fluffy and lighthearted, and I needed something between some heavy reading. Super excited to read the next volume!

Read if you want: fluffy bl manga, school romance.

Crota by Owl Goingback

Scary! I haven't read a lot of horror about monsters but this one was super cool. It deals with indigenous legends and the cave hunting part was suffocating and scary! Just not a big fan of a disabled child getting cured at the end of the book, the kid is not the main character but it kind of put me off in the end.

Read if you want: horror with monsters, police procedure, indigenous legends.

As I Descended by Robin Talley (x)

This was pretty dark! The arc of corruption and madness was pretty well-done, and the characters made me want to read more and more. I read it for Disability Pride Month as the main character is disabled. I was glad that her arc isn't only about her disability while also mentioning her difficulties and people's prejudice.

Read if you want: spooky YA, queer retellings, Shakespeare retellings.

The Devotion of Suspect X by Keigo Higashino, tr. Alexander O. Smith

I'm not a big fan of police procedure, but this story is full of twists and turns that made me so curious about what would happen next! It's more of a mind game between the police and the killer than a thriller full of action, but it was an enjoyable read.

Read if you want: psychological thriller, police procedure.

Erotic Stories for Punjabi Widows By Balli Kaur Jaswal

Super fun and thought-provoking! It deals with stories bringing a community together, women finding a space to share stories, and also a mystery in the middle of everything. One of my favorites of the month!

Read if you want: fun stories, book club books, contemporary fiction.

Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie (x) (x)

I took my time to read this book as it's a literary work, and it's very experimental. I liked the narration and the flow of the story. There're so many fascinating things about the story, the magic, the culture, India's history, and many others things. However, it's a long book. I was a bit tired at the end, but still, a great read.

Read if you want: literary and experimental fiction, magical realism.

The Other Black Girl by Zakiya Dalila Harris

The pacing of this thriller was slow, but I was interested in the diversity drama in Nella's work, so I was not bothered at first. But most of the main events happen right at the end, and the known villain does a "villain explaining their plan" that was a bit cartoonish. Also, the villain was only a part in the big scheme, and we don't get answers about this big thing happening. Still, there're some thought-provoking topics in this book, and the more "fantasy" aspect of it was super spooky.

Read if you want: slow-paced thrillers, psychological thrillers.

Ariel by Sylvia Plath (x)

I want to read more poetry, so I chose this one from the library. I enjoyed some poems and the images the writer created, but most of them fell flat for me.

Rereads:

Reborn! Vol 1 by Akira Amano, Frances E. Wall (translator)

Livros disponíveis em Português:

Links para os meus reviews no skook!

Baú de Sonhos Impossíveis de Filipe Bedendo (x)

De Repente Adolescente de vários autores (x) (x)

A Botija do Fantasma de Pablo Praxedes (x)

And feel free to talk to me about the books of this list :)

Read in: Feb | Mar | Apr | May | June |

☆Book Photography ☆ Storygraph ☆ Scribd ☆

[how2to18]

DURING THE POSTWAR PERIOD, the genres of the fantastic — especially science fiction — have been deeply intertwined with the genres of popular music, especially rock ’n’ roll. Both appeal to youthful audiences, and both make the familiar strange, seeking escape in enchantment and metamorphosis. As Steppenwolf sang in 1968: “Fantasy will set you free […] to the stars away from here.” Two recent books — one a nonfiction survey of 1970s pop music, the other a horror novel about heavy metal — explore this heady intermingling of rock and the fantastic.

As Jason Heller details in his new book Strange Stars: David Bowie, Pop Music, and the Decade Sci-Fi Exploded, the magic carpet rides of the youth counterculture encompassed both the amorphous yearnings of acid rock and the hard-edged visions of science fiction. In Heller’s account, virtually all the major rock icons — from Jimi Hendrix to David Crosby, from Pete Townshend to Ian Curtis — were avid SF fans; not only was their music strongly influenced by Heinlein, Clarke, Ballard, and other authors, but it also amounted to a significant body of popular SF in its own right. As Heller shows, many rock stars were aspiring SF writers, while established authors in the field sometimes wrote lyrics for popular bands, and a few became rockers themselves. British fantasist Michael Moorcock, for example, fronted an outfit called The Deep Fix while also penning songs for — and performing with — the space-rock group Hawkwind (once memorably described, by Motörhead’s Lemmy Kilmister, as “Star Trek with long hair and drugs”).

Heller’s book focuses on the “explosion” of SF music during the 1970s, with chapters chronicling, year by year, the exhilarating debut of fresh music subcultures — prog rock, glam rock, Krautrock, disco — and their saturation with themes of space/time travel, alien visitation, and futuristic (d)evolution. He writes, “’70s pop culture forged a special interface with the future.” Many of its key songs and albums “didn’t just contain sci-fi lyrics,” but they were “reflection[s] of sci-fi” themselves, “full of futuristic tones and the innovative manipulation of studio gadgetry” — such as the vocoder, with its robotic simulacrum of the human voice. Heller’s discussion moves from the hallucinatory utopianism of the late 1960s to the “cool, plastic futurism” of the early 1980s with intelligence and panache.

The dominant figure in Heller’s study is, unsurprisingly, David Bowie, the delirious career of whose space-age antihero, Major Tom, bookended the decade — from “Space Oddity” in 1969 to “Ashes to Ashes” in 1980. Bowie’s 1972 album The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars was a full-blown SF extravaganza, its freaky starman representing “some new hybrid of thespian rocker and sci-fi myth,” but it had a lot of company during the decade. Heller insightfully analyzes a wide range of SF “concept albums,” from Jefferson Starship’s Blows Against the Empire (1970), the first rock record to be nominated for a Hugo Award, to Parliament’s Mothership Connection (1975), which “reprogramm[ed] funk in order to launch it into tomorrow,” to Gary Numan and Tubeway Army’s Replicas (1979), an album “steeped in the technological estrangement and psychological dystopianism of Dick and Ballard.”

Heller’s coverage of these peaks of achievement is interspersed with amusing asides on more minor, “novelty” phenomena, such as “the robot dance craze of the late ’60s and early ’70s,” and compelling analyses of obscure artists, such as French synthesizer wizard Richard Pinhas, who released (with his band Heldon) abrasive critiques of industrial society — for example, Electronique Guerilla (1974) — while pursuing a dissertation on science fiction under the direction of Gilles Deleuze at the Sorbonne. He also writes astutely about the impact of major SF films on the development of 1970s pop music: Monardo’s Star Wars and Other Galactic Funk (1977), for example, turned the cantina scene from Star Wars into a synth-pop dance-floor hit. At the same time, Heller is shrewdly alert to the historical importance of grassroots venues such as London’s UFO Club, which incubated the early dimensional fantasies of Pink Floyd and the off-the-wall protopunk effusions of the Deviants (whose frontman, Mick Farren, had a long career as an SF novelist and, in 1978, released an album with my favorite title ever: Vampires Stole My Lunch Money). Finally, Heller reconstructs some fascinating, but sadly abortive, collaborations — Theodore Sturgeon working to adapt Crosby, Stills & Nash’s “Wooden Ships” as a screenplay, Paul McCartney hiring Star Trek’s Gene Roddenberry to craft a story about Wings. In some alternative universe, these weird projects came to fruition.

Heller’s erudition is astonishing, but it can also be overwhelming, drowning the reader in a welter of minutiae about one-hit wonders and the career peregrinations of minor talents. In his acknowledgments, Heller thanks his editor for helping him convert “an encyclopedia” into “a story,” but judging from the format of the finished product, this transformation was not fully complete: penetrating analyses frequently peter out into rote listings of albums and bands. There is a capping discography, but it is not comprehensive and is, strangely, organized by song title rather than by artist. The index is similarly unhelpful, containing only the proper names of individuals; one has to know, for instance, who Edgar Froese or Ralf Hütter are in order to locate the relevant passages on Tangerine Dream and Kraftwerk, respectively.

That said, there is no gainsaying the magisterial authority displayed in assertions such as: “The first fully formed sci-fi funk song was ‘Escape from Planet Earth’ by a vocal quartet from Camden, New Jersey, called the Continental Four.” And who else has even heard of — much less listened to — oddments like 1977’s Machines, “the sole album by the mysterious electronic group known as Lem,” who “likely took their name from sci-fi author Stanislaw Lem of Solaris fame”? Anyone interested in either popular music or science fiction of the 1970s will find countless nuggets of sheer delight in Strange Stars, and avid fans, after perusing the volume, will probably go bankrupt hunting down rare vinyl on eBay.

While Heller’s main focus is the confluence of rock ’n’ roll and science fiction, he occasionally addresses the influence of popular fantasy on major music artists of the decade. Marc Bolan, of T. Rex fame, was, we learn, a huge fan of Tolkien and C. S. Lewis, while prog-rock stalwarts Yes and Emerson, Lake & Palmer managed “to combine science fiction and fantasy, fusing them into a metaphysical, post-hippie meditation on the nature of reality.” What’s missing from the book, however, is any serious discussion of the strain of occult and dark fantasy that ran through 1960s and ’70s rock, the shadows cast by Aleister Crowley and H. P. Lovecraft over Jimmy Page, John Lennon, Mick Jagger, and (yes) Bowie himself. After all, Jim Morrison’s muse was a Celtic high priestess named Patricia Kennealy who went on, following the death of her Lizard King, to a career as a popular fantasy author. Readers interested in this general topic should consult the idiosyncratic survey written by Gary Lachman, a member of Blondie, entitled Turn Off Your Mind: The Mystic Sixties and the Dark Side of the Age of Aquarius (2001).

Heller does comment, in passing, on an incipient musical form that would, during the 1980s, emerge as the dark-fantasy genre par excellence: heavy metal. Though metal was, as Heller states, “just beginning to awaken” in the 1970s, his book includes sharp analyses of major prototypes such as Black Sabbath’s Paranoid (1970), Blue Öyster Cult’s Tyranny and Mutation (1973), and the early efforts of Judas Priest and Iron Maiden. This was the technocratic lineage of heavy metal, the segment of the genre most closely aligned with science fiction, especially in its dystopian modes, and which would come to fruition, during the 1980s, in classic concept albums like Voivod’s Killing Technology (1987) and Queensrÿche’s Operation: Mindcrime (1988).

But the 1980s also saw the emergence of more fantasy-oriented strains, such as black, doom, and death metal, whose rise to dominance coincided with the sudden explosion in popularity of a fantastic genre that had, until that time, largely skulked in the shadow of SF and high fantasy: supernatural horror. Unsurprisingly, the decade saw a convergence of metal music and horror fiction that was akin to the 1970s fusion of rock and SF anatomized in Strange Stars. Here, as elsewhere, Black Sabbath was a pioneer, their self-titled 1970 debut offering a potent brew of pop paganism culled equally from low-budget Hammer films and the occult thrillers of Dennis Wheatley. By the mid-1980s, there were hundreds of bands — from Sweden’s Bathory to England’s Fields of the Nephilim to the pride of Tampa, Florida, Morbid Angel — who were offering similar fare. Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos inspired songs by Metallica, Mercyful Fate, and countless other groups — including Necronomicon, a German thrash-metal outfit whose name references a fictional grimoire featured in several of the author’s stories.

By the same token, heavy metal music deeply influenced the burgeoning field of horror fiction. Several major 1980s texts treated this theme overtly: the doom-metal outfit in George R. R. Martin’s The Armageddon Rag (1983) is a twisted emanation of the worst impulses of the 1960s counterculture; the protagonist of Anne Rice’s The Vampire Lestat (1985) is a Gothic rocker whose performances articulate a pop mythology of glamorous undeath; and the mega-cult band in John Skipp and Craig Spector’s splatterpunk classic The Scream (1988) are literal hell-raisers, a Satanic incarnation of the most paranoid fantasies of Christian anti-rock zealots. The heady conjoining of hard rock with supernaturalism percolated down from these best sellers to the more ephemeral tomes that packed the drugstore racks during the decade, an outpouring of gory fodder affectionately surveyed in Grady Hendrix’s award-winning study Paperbacks from Hell: The Twisted History of ’70s and ’80s Horror Fiction (2017). Hendrix, himself a horror author of some note, has now published We Sold Our Souls (2018), the quintessential horror-metal novel for our times.

Hendrix has stated that, prior to embarking on this project, he was not “a natural metal fan”:

I was scared of serious metal when I was growing up. Slayer and Metallica intimidated me, and I was too unsophisticated to appreciate the fun of hair metal bands like Mötley Crüe and Twisted Sister, so I basically sucked. […] But I got really deep into metal while writing We Sold Our Souls and kind of fell in love.

The author’s immersion in — and fondness for — the genre is evident on every page of his new novel. Chapters are titled using the names of classic metal albums: “Countdown to Extinction” (Megadeth, 1992), “From Enslavement to Obliteration” (Napalm Death, 1988), “Twilight of the Gods” (Bathory, 1991), and so on. The effect is to summon a hallowed musical canon while at the same time evoking the story’s themes and imparting an emotional urgency to its events. These events also nostalgically echo 1980s rock-horror novels: like The Armageddon Rag, Hendrix’s plot chronicles the reunion of a cult outfit whose breakup decades before was enigmatically fraught; like The Scream, it features a demonic metal band that converts its worshipful fans into feral zombies; like The Vampire Lestat, it culminates in a phantasmagoric stadium concert that erupts into a brutal orgy of violence. Yet despite these pervasive allusions, the novel does not come across as mere pastiche: it has an energy and authenticity that make it feel quite original.

A large part of that originality lies in its protagonist. As the cock-rock genre par excellence, its blistering riffs and screeching solos steeped in adolescent testosterone, heavy metal has had very few notable female performers. But one of them, at least in Hendrix’s fictive history, was Kris Pulaski, lead guitarist of Dürt Würk, a legendary quintet from rural Pennsylvania that abruptly dissolved, under mysterious circumstances, in the late 1990s, just as they were poised for national fame. Kris was a scrappy bundle of nerves and talent, a kick-ass songwriter and a take-no-prisoners performer:

She had been punched in the mouth by a straight-edge vegan, had the toes of her Doc Martens kissed by too many boys to count, and been knocked unconscious after catching a boot beneath the chin from a stage diver who’d managed to do a flip into the crowd off the stage at Wally’s. She’d made the mezzanine bounce like a trampoline at Rumblestiltskins, the kids pogoing so hard flakes of paint rained down like hail.

But that was eons ago. As the story opens, she is staffing the night desk at a Best Western, burned out at 47, living in a broken-down house with her ailing mother and trying to ignore “the background hum of self-loathing that formed the backbeat of her life.” She hasn’t seen her bandmates in decades, since she drunkenly crashed their tour van and almost killed them all, and hasn’t picked up a guitar in almost as long, constrained by the terms of a draconian contract she signed with Dürt Würk’s former lead singer, Terry Hunt, who now controls the band’s backlist. While Kris has lapsed into brooding obscurity, Hunt has gone on to global success, headlining a “nu metal” outfit called Koffin (think Korn or Limp Bizkit) whose mainstream sound Kris despises: “It was all about branding, fan outreach, accessibility, spray-on attitude, moving crowds of white kids smoothly from the pit to your merch booth.” It was the exact opposite of genuine metal, which “tore the happy face off the world. It told the truth.”

To inject a hint of authenticity into Koffin’s rampant commodification, Hunt occasionally covers old Dürt Würk hits. But he avoids like the plague any songs from the band’s long-lost third album, Troglodyte, with their elaborate mythology of surveillance and domination:

[T]here is a hole in the center of the world, and inside that hole is Black Iron Mountain, an underground empire of caverns and lava seas, ruled over by the Blind King who sees everything with the help of his Hundred Handed Eye. At the root of the mountain is the Wheel. Troglodyte was chained to the Wheel along with millions of others, which they turned pointlessly in a circle, watched eternally by the Hundred Handed Eye.

Inspired by the arrival of a butterfly that proves the existence of a world beyond his bleak dungeon, Troglodyte ultimately revolts against Black Iron Mountain, overthrowing the Blind King and leading his fellow slaves into the light.

One might assume that Hunt avoids this album because the scenario it constructs can too readily be perceived as an allegory of liberation from the consumerist shackles of Koffin’s nu-metal pablum. That might be part of the reason, but Hunt’s main motivation is even more insidious: he fears Troglodyte because its eldritch tale is literally true — Koffin is a front for a shadowy supernatural agency that feeds on human souls, and Dürt Würk’s third album holds the key to unmasking and fighting it. This strange reality gradually dawns on Kris, and when Koffin announces plans for a massive series of concerts culminating in a “Hellstock” festival in the Nevada desert, she decides to combat its infernal designs with the only weapon she has: her music. Because “a song isn’t a commercial for an album. It isn’t a tool to build name awareness or reinforce your brand. A song is a bullet that can shatter your chains.”

This bizarre plot, like the concept albums by Mastodon or Iron Maiden it evokes, runs the risk of collapsing into grandiloquent absurdity if not carried off with true conviction. And this is Hendrix’s key achievement in the novel: he never condescends, never winks at the audience or tucks his tongue in cheek. Like the best heavy metal, We Sold Our Souls is scabrous and harrowing, its pop mythology fleshed out with vividly gruesome set pieces, as when Kris surprises the Blind King’s minions at their ghastly repast:

Its fingernails were black and it bent over Scottie, slobbering up the black foam that came boiling out of his mouth. Kris […] saw that the same thing was crouched over Bill, a starved mummy, maggot-white, its skin hanging in loose folds. A skin tag between its legs jutted from a gray pubic bush, bouncing obscenely like an engorged tick. […] Its gaze was old and cold and hungry and its chin dripped black foam like a beard. It sniffed the air and hissed, its bright yellow tongue vibrating, its gums a vivid red.

The irruption of these grisly horrors into an otherwise mundane milieu of strip malls and franchise restaurants and cookie-cutter apartments is handled brilliantly, on a par with the best of classic splatterpunk by the likes of Joe R. Lansdale or David J. Schow.

Hendrix also, like Stephen King, has a shrewd feel for true-to-life relationships, which adds a grounding of humanity to his cabalistic flights. Kris’s attempts to reconnect with her alienated bandmates — such as erstwhile drummer JD, a wannabe Viking berserker who has refashioned his mother’s basement into a “Metalhead Valhalla” — are poignantly handled, and the hesitant bond she develops with a young Koffin fan named Melanie has the convincing ring of post-feminist, intergenerational sisterhood. Throughout the novel, Hendrix tackles gender issues with an intrepid slyness, from Kris’s brawling tomboy efforts to fit into a male-dominated world to Melanie’s frustration with her lazy, lying, patronizing boyfriend, with whom she breaks up in hilarious fashion:

She screamed. She broke his housemate’s bong. She Frisbee-d the Shockwave [game] disc so hard it left a divot in the kitchen wall. She raged out of the house as his housemates came back from brunch.

“Dude,” they said to Greg as he jogged by them, “she is so on the rag.”

“Are we breaking up?” Greg asked, clueless, through her car window.

It took all her self-control not to back over him as she drove off.

Such scenes of believable banality compellingly anchor the novel’s febrile horrors, as do the passages of talk-radio blather interspersed between the chapters, which remind us that conspiratorial lunacy is always only a click of the AM dial away.

While obviously a bit of a throwback, We Sold Our Souls shows that the 1980s milieu of heavy metal and occult horror — of bootleg cassettes and battered paperbacks — continues to have resonance in our age of iPods and cell-phone apps. It also makes clear that the dreamy confluence of rock and the fantastic so ably anatomized in Heller’s Strange Stars is still going strong.

¤

Rob Latham is a LARB senior editor. His most recent book is Science Fiction Criticism: An Anthology of Essential Writings, published by Bloomsbury Press in 2017.

The post Magic Carpet Rides: Rock Music and the Fantastic appeared first on Los Angeles Review of Books.

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