The Vampire Armand
Rice, Anne. 2000. The Vampire Armand (The Vampire Chronicles) Book 6. 1st ed. Ballantine Books.
Rating:
4
Summary:
Short, more like a character back story then a novel
The book is essentially the story of how Armand, first introduced as the leader of a group of vampires in France in ‘Interview With A Vampire’, became a vampire. Armand was a gifted young man living in or near Russia who had a special ability to paint idols of the Virgin Mary and Christ. One day he is captured by the invading Turks, despite his father’s best attempts to stop them. He is sold into sexual slavery and raped by a number of men. Apparently he was very attractive and his owners were able to sell him at a great going rate.
Ultimately Armand ends being bought by Marius, the famed vampire father and keeper of ‘Those Who Must Be Kept’ (Marius also created Lestat, though a couple hundred years later). Marius takes Armand under his wing, educates him, and loves him – rather erotically at times. He also ensures that Armand is educated in the arts of sensuality, turning the novel into pure erotica at times.
But because of who Armand was, he couldn’t help but recognize the differences between Marius and the rest of his lovers. Armand finally confronts Marius, who relents and makes Armand a vampire. But their association together afterwards is short-lived as the Children of Satan, led by Santino, come after Marius. Armand thinks his creator/master dead and ends up joining Santino in his wicked ways. It is in this role that he eventually meets Lestat.
Eventually Armand moves to the U.S. When Lestat returns from heaven and hell (this happens in Memnoch the Devil), he is carrying a veil that has Christ’s visage on it. Armand sees the veil. Recognizing Christ as the person who used to inspire his painting, he decides to give up his life as a tribute to him by flying up into the sun. But Armand is too strong at this point and the sun only injures him but does not kill him. He ends up being taken in by a young boy, Benji, and his mistress, a pianist that is fixated on the Appasionata because her parents died when she was getting ready to perform it. Eventually they become vampires as well, and this catches the reader up to the point when the story begins – Armand begins telling his story to David Talbot, another vampire and the new chronicler of the vampire immortals in the vampire world.
Review:
This was actually the second time I had listened to this book on CD (I didn’t remember it very well, so it was kind of fun to listen to it again). I’m not particularly impressed with this novel in the Vampire Chronicles because it isn’t really in the format of a novel. There is no real introduction, no major reversals or revelations, and no real climax. At the end of the book you feel like you have just been made privy to Anne Rice’s notes on the background story of Armand that accompanies his appearances in the other stories. There is not real attempt to make this into a story of its own. It is really just as though Anne Rice wrote this book for three reasons: (1) She already had all of the material for it because it just fills in the gaps in the other books where Armand tells most of his story, so it was just a quick narrative that probably took her a month to write. (2) Money. (3) Because there are so many fans that love her books, they probably want a novel about each character in the chronicles now and Rice is happy to comply (see reason number 2).
Of course the characterizations are good, but that’s because that’s all there is to this novel. There is no story and there isn’t even really an attempt to make one up. It’s pretty much just a very brief account of where Armand comes from and how he became a vampire. No adventures. No interesting new information about his life or vampires. It’s pretty boring in a lot of regards.
Which is probably why the book turns to erotica. Because there is no real story, I’m guessing Ms. Rice turned to the erotica to fill in the gaps. There is a lot of sex in this book. Now, don’t get me wrong, I don’t mind reading about sex in books. I’m not offended by erotica. I just thought it was kind of gratuitous. What does the erotica have to do with Armand? Is it really necessary? Would Armand the Vampire not be ‘Armand the Vampire’ without the sexual history? I really didn’t see the point of it, other than to make the book more interesting to the reader. If that was Rice’s intent, well, then, she probably succeeded.
Overall, this is definitely not the best book in the Vampire Chronicles. It is very short, there is no story, and there is an attempt to compensate for the lack of story by including a bunch of homosexual, heterosexual, and pedophilic sexual erotica. The book reads as a quick compilation of all of the other information that was previously known about Armand with a few sensual details added in. However, despite not really thinking this was a great book, I’m still going to recommend it to fans of the Vampire Chronicles because they are the only ones that would really appreciate it. If you have not read the other books in the series, do not, I repeat, do not begin with this one. Start from the beginning and read from there (Interview With A Vampire), because this is not a great example of what Anne Rice can do.