The Vampire Lestat

The Vampire Lestat is a vampire novel by the American writer Anne Rice, the second of her Vampire Chronicles and a sequel to Interview with the Vampire.

The book is narrated by Lestat himself, who gives his own account of the events Louis described and disagrees with much of it. He begins in eighteenth-century France, where he grew up the youngest son of an aristocratic family with no money and no prospects, and where a season hunting wolves made his reputation before a vampire called Magnus took him and made him immortal. From there the story moves through Paris and the theatre of vampires, through Lestat's long friendship with the ancient Marius, and through centuries of hiding what he is. In the present day he forms a band, records songs that name names, and uses the noise to force the oldest of his kind to answer him. Rice writes the character as vain, generous, reckless and entirely without guilt, and lets him explain himself at length.

The novel is the one that turned a single book into a series, and Lestat's voice is what carries it.