The Vampire Chronicles--Anne Rice
I've read a few Vampire books, and seen a few movies, but I don't claim to be an expert in Vampire literature. But it seems that Anne Rice's "Vampire Chronicles" is one of the mainstays of the genre. Anyway, I enjoyed the series.
As a whole, the "Chronicles" are well written. The first book "Interview with the Vampire" does a fine job of introducing Anne Rice's world. If it has a weakness it's the fact that the narrator is vocally narrating the story to someone else in the book. In other words, the story is one long exposition through dialogue. The idea is good, but it works better in the form of a short story. Rice is methodical in the buildup of her story, focusing on details and history before delving into the action. "Interview with the Vampire" may lose a portion of readers through its slow and seemingly meandering story arc, but Rice ties everything together in the later books. So, in short, the first book is good, but it main purpose is just to build up the later two books.
The second book "The Vampire Lestat" introduces us to the main protagonist of the whole story, Lestat, a Vampire who awakes (in the mid-eighties) and decides to become the front-man of a goth-metal band (because it's the perfect disguise, hehe), and announce to the world the existence of vampires (in short). The story then backtracks two hundred years and introduces us to Lestat's past. "The Vampire Lestat" goes much deeper into Rice's universe which is good. Unfortunately, after the excellent hook in the beginning, we don't actually get to see much of Lestat being a rock star until the third book. Still, it's a well written and interesting book.
If the first two books are buildup and history, "The Queen of the Damned" is climax the whole way through. In short, Lestat's music is so good (or bad, as my parents would argue) that it wakes up what is essentially the Vampire "god" or goddess as the case goes here. She decides to make Lestat her new prince and consort, all the while intending to destroy the world. Yay! I love impending doom in books! While the first two books are told almost completely through the eyes of one character, the last one has multiple character viewpoints, which was a good choice because there were so many plot lines to tie up. Also, multiple characters introduced through the first two books return for the grand finale, and its interesting to see how their years of immortality have changed them (yes, Rice does a good job of character development). This is getting long. . .in short, "Queen of the Damned" is really good, the best of the three (if you are action oriented).
Note: If you like dark and creepy sounding rock music, the soundtrack for "The Queen of the Damned" movie is actually quite good.
Now, onto Philip Pullman's "Dark Materials" trilogy. Because I'm getting bored of typing this is going to be short.
The first book "The Golden Compass" is really good.
The second book, "The Subtle Knife" is not as good.
The third book "The Amber Spyglass" is less good than the previous two.
The reason for this is that Philip Pullman is a genius, and his overall story arc is very grand--As the story viewpoints start branching away from the main character of the first book, Lyra, the series gets harder to follow, and less interesting. "The Golden Compass" introduced some excellent characters, but we see less of them through the following books, which is a shame. While Pullman's writing style is very good and engaging, some people may not appreciate the fact that Pullman's story is a long allegory for casting down "god." In fact one of his character directly discovers that "physics" is superior to "god." Still, Pullman does interweave both physics and Christian mythology (academic use of word) into his story in a very interesting manner.
And now I am done. The end.
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