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US Mall 1 - The Vampire Armand (The Vampire Chronicles) Book 6
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List Price: $7.99
Our Price: $2.99
Your Save: $ 5.00 ( 63% )
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Manufacturer: Ballantine Books
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Average Customer Rating:   
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Binding: Mass Market Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN: 9780345434807
ISBN: 0345434803
Label: Ballantine Books
Manufacturer: Ballantine Books
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 457
Publication Date: 2000-10-03
Publisher: Ballantine Books
Release Date: 2000-10-03
Studio: Ballantine Books
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: A little too much Review
Comment: Welcome back to the tale of the "Articulate" Vampires! The Vampire Lestat, for once, is not doing the talking, having, in the aftermath of his Dante-esk trek through Heaven and Hell with Memnoch the Devil, gone into a catatonic state in the chapel of Dora's nunnery. And, comatose, even Lestat can't get into that much trouble. So David Talbot, the self-styled historian of the Vampires, is forced to write down the tale of The Vampire Armand instead.
(***Spoilers***) The Vampire Armand is the tale of Armand, aka Amadeo, aka Andrei, from his capture and sale as a mute slave suffering a rather amnesiac case of PTS, to his boyhood love affair with the Child of the Millennia Marius, to, briefly, his time beneath Les Innocents and in the theater where Louis finds him in Interview with the Vampire, to the aftermath of Veronica's Veil. Most of the story is touching, the beginning especially overburdened with tiresome detail for even the most strenuous Rice fan: the moving story of a vampire finding god in his own way. But then Rice takes Armand back into the tales we know of him from Louis and Lestat, seemingly taking this perfect being, fabricating a story to make him "fall", and then bringing him back to his previous perfection with Lestat's finding of the Veil and the help of two seemingly amoral but perfect children.
While a tale similar to The Vampire Lestat, The Vampire Armand seems to be a tale rather halfway thought through, with two hundred years or more skated over by a vampire of the same name but utterly different charector, who then returns for a rather bizarre redemption. I've yet to even comprehend the purpose of the last 200 pages of the book. Borrow, don't buy, unless you're utterly enraptured with Rice.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Partially Fantastic
Comment: I came across this book completely by accident - I had no intention of reading any book of the Vampire Chronicles after finishing Interview, becuase I thought it was way too far fetched. I especially disliked the plot of Memnoch, because it went more than just a notch too far - it was completely mentally unbalanced. But, having come across this intriguing installment regarding one of my favorite characters, I decided to give it a shot.
While reading the first part of "The Vampire Armand" I was simply hooked - I found myself fascinated by 15th Century Venice and Armand's intriguing and erotic relationship with the astounding character of Marius. I read it whenever I could and loved it; I thought it was a brilliant story about love, life and guilt, rather than a 'vampire' story, especially in the moving segment where Armand returns home and meets his parents once more. I was sure to name the book one of the best I'd ever read until I got to Part 2. Having read the glorious part 1, ending with a rather enigmatic and dark tone, I felt I can't wait to find out what happens next. However, I was very disappointed. We had returned to bizzare Vampire stories. The revelation of the plot Claudia had with Armand completely ruined her character and her death for me; it was just plain ridiculous. I couldn't care less about the blood of Christ and so on and so forth and all of those depictions of Hell and Heaven. The image of Lestat's torn eye disgusted me. In short, I felt the second and third parts were terrible, uninteresting, and disgusting. But, since the first part is still the majority of the book, I'll have to give it four stars, for a splendid, moving and touching beginning. I am also certain that I will not read any other Rice books from now on.
Highly recommended if you liked Memnoch the Devil... Highly recommended to just skip Parts 2 and 3 if you didn't.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Nice overview, but not her best work.
Comment: The Vampire Armand is a great book for people who haven't read the rest of the Vampire Chronicles. For those that have, it is a more in-depth version of the story that Lestat has already told about Armand. This takes up about three-fourths of the book.
The remainder is a rather engrossing tale that describes Armand's struggle to find his faith again, and how the Veil of Veronica effected him so profoundly. This part of the book mimics Rice's other works in her emotional and heartbreaking discussion of good vs. evil.
The expository part of the book that tells of Armand's life from the beginning, is of course full of Rice's characteristic lurid prose and rich, intense environments and relationships. It does, however, somewhat bore those of us who have read the other Vampire books, since we know the story already.
Strongly recommended for those who don't have a background with Rice but certainly not her best work.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Un gran libro para leer
Comment: En realidad pienso que este libro vale mucho la pena, y la verdad el precio es increible en mexico este libro cuesta al rededor de $500 pesos asi que esta super barato.
Customer Rating:
Summary: A very decent and satisfying read.
Comment: 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.
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Editorial Reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: A little too much Review
Comment: Welcome back to the tale of the "Articulate" Vampires! The Vampire Lestat, for once, is not doing the talking, having, in the aftermath of his Dante-esk trek through Heaven and Hell with Memnoch the Devil, gone into a catatonic state in the chapel of Dora's nunnery. And, comatose, even Lestat can't get into that much trouble. So David Talbot, the self-styled historian of the Vampires, is forced to write down the tale of The Vampire Armand instead.
(***Spoilers***) The Vampire Armand is the tale of Armand, aka Amadeo, aka Andrei, from his capture and sale as a mute slave suffering a rather amnesiac case of PTS, to his boyhood love affair with the Child of the Millennia Marius, to, briefly, his time beneath Les Innocents and in the theater where Louis finds him in Interview with the Vampire, to the aftermath of Veronica's Veil. Most of the story is touching, the beginning especially overburdened with tiresome detail for even the most strenuous Rice fan: the moving story of a vampire finding god in his own way. But then Rice takes Armand back into the tales we know of him from Louis and Lestat, seemingly taking this perfect being, fabricating a story to make him "fall", and then bringing him back to his previous perfection with Lestat's finding of the Veil and the help of two seemingly amoral but perfect children.
While a tale similar to The Vampire Lestat, The Vampire Armand seems to be a tale rather halfway thought through, with two hundred years or more skated over by a vampire of the same name but utterly different charector, who then returns for a rather bizarre redemption. I've yet to even comprehend the purpose of the last 200 pages of the book. Borrow, don't buy, unless you're utterly enraptured with Rice.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Partially Fantastic
Comment: I came across this book completely by accident - I had no intention of reading any book of the Vampire Chronicles after finishing Interview, becuase I thought it was way too far fetched. I especially disliked the plot of Memnoch, because it went more than just a notch too far - it was completely mentally unbalanced. But, having come across this intriguing installment regarding one of my favorite characters, I decided to give it a shot.
While reading the first part of "The Vampire Armand" I was simply hooked - I found myself fascinated by 15th Century Venice and Armand's intriguing and erotic relationship with the astounding character of Marius. I read it whenever I could and loved it; I thought it was a brilliant story about love, life and guilt, rather than a 'vampire' story, especially in the moving segment where Armand returns home and meets his parents once more. I was sure to name the book one of the best I'd ever read until I got to Part 2. Having read the glorious part 1, ending with a rather enigmatic and dark tone, I felt I can't wait to find out what happens next. However, I was very disappointed. We had returned to bizzare Vampire stories. The revelation of the plot Claudia had with Armand completely ruined her character and her death for me; it was just plain ridiculous. I couldn't care less about the blood of Christ and so on and so forth and all of those depictions of Hell and Heaven. The image of Lestat's torn eye disgusted me. In short, I felt the second and third parts were terrible, uninteresting, and disgusting. But, since the first part is still the majority of the book, I'll have to give it four stars, for a splendid, moving and touching beginning. I am also certain that I will not read any other Rice books from now on.
Highly recommended if you liked Memnoch the Devil... Highly recommended to just skip Parts 2 and 3 if you didn't.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Nice overview, but not her best work.
Comment: The Vampire Armand is a great book for people who haven't read the rest of the Vampire Chronicles. For those that have, it is a more in-depth version of the story that Lestat has already told about Armand. This takes up about three-fourths of the book.
The remainder is a rather engrossing tale that describes Armand's struggle to find his faith again, and how the Veil of Veronica effected him so profoundly. This part of the book mimics Rice's other works in her emotional and heartbreaking discussion of good vs. evil.
The expository part of the book that tells of Armand's life from the beginning, is of course full of Rice's characteristic lurid prose and rich, intense environments and relationships. It does, however, somewhat bore those of us who have read the other Vampire books, since we know the story already.
Strongly recommended for those who don't have a background with Rice but certainly not her best work.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Un gran libro para leer
Comment: En realidad pienso que este libro vale mucho la pena, y la verdad el precio es increible en mexico este libro cuesta al rededor de $500 pesos asi que esta super barato.
Customer Rating:
Summary: A very decent and satisfying read.
Comment: 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.
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