They don’t have all the books??! How rude. You might be able to find the others online for free very cheaply, or at second-hand stores like the Salvation Army.
There ARE different main characters in some of the books, and in some, Lestat is almost entirely left out. He is mentioned only once just to point out that he WILL be completely left out in Vittorio, but that book was not really intended as a Vampire Chronicle.
But the order of the VC still tracks along Lestat’s journey, even if it veers off for a book or two (as with the Vampire Armand or Blood and Gold) and then picks back up with him.
Short answer is: without access to the full canon, you can’t just breeze through it like I did, and I don’t know which ones you are missing, but…. I recommend you read them in order as best you can. In later canon, other characters will refer to scenes already played out in earlier canon, contributing their own perspective, which may be confusing and will spoil those scenes for you. It will be up to you to decide which character’s account of things to believe. They’re all wildly unreliable narrators with their own selfish reasons for explaining things the way they do ;D
^Regardless of the “truth,” do I grin like I’m seeing old friends every time I see a lineup of VC on a bookshelf, no matter what their condition? You bet your a$$ I do.
Hit the jump for moar on this.
Some ppl who HAVE access refuse to read Prince Lestat, or a bunch of the other books, and won’t even give them a chance, so your lack of access might also reflect the fact that the books are not all equally popular. Your library might have purposely not included what it considers the less-popular installments.
Most of the fandom, in my experience, have had different gateway drugs to the series. I love collecting stories of how people first got into it (#I love these kind of stories tag). They first saw movie!IWTV or movie!QOTD and then read the corresponding book, or a friend gave them a random one from the series, or someone donated the whole series to them, etc. From there, some people read in order, some people skipped around.
THAT SAID, if you want to make VC fanworks (including fic, meta discussion, fanart, etc.) or do VC RP, it seems to help if you’ve read at least IWTV, TVL, and TVA (TVA might spoil previous events in canon but it’s really THE authority on Armand)(and read some fanfic!).
I think those VC contain the crux of the fan fave characters (Lestat, Louis, ((Nicki)), Gabrielle, Armand, Daniel, Marius) and scenes that have had alot of impact in developing the main characters. Your fanworks/RP will be richer if you know the background of the characters, because you’ll be able to refer to the events, or quotes, or take them as a jumping-off point in your work.
However, in the later books, you get new info, new characters, and new perspectives on previous events (example: Claudia’s diary entry in QOTD is heartwrenching).
@annabellioncourt had added this good commentary on that post and I agree with her 110% (except that I don’t love Vittorio but still):
I personally recommend that people read the first three books (IWTV, TVL, QOTD) and if they really enjoy it to try reading the rest of them.
But my caveat for that is that if they don’t care for Body Thief or Memnoch then still give Pandora and Vittorio a chance, then Armand, and if they enjoyed Armand and Pandora, to try Blood and Gold.
Its complicated, but so is the series, for such a seemingly straightforward concept of “vampires decide to write tell-all memoirs of their behind the scenes lives.”
Lemme just explain a thing real quick tho first, there are differnt types of VC “facts,” and you might find something of what you’re looking for here anyway:
Canon facts – facts explicitly stated in canon, like that Daniel’s eyes are violet, or Claudia’s birthday is September 29.
Authorial facts – facts not explicitly stated in canon but AR gave us, like that Louis’ birthday is October 9 and Lestat’s birthday is November 7. Some fandom ppl accept these into their own headcanon and some ppl do not.
Fanon “facts” – “facts,” or rather, info and stories that some fandom ppl have accepted into their headcanon that was generated in fanfic or fanworks, or wherever, like the fact that the eighth de Lioncourt was a girl.
headcanon – what individual fans believe as true facts, which might be an original idea or from one of the above categories.
^SO WITH ALL THAT IN MIND, here are some tags* where you might find any combination of those things:
#headcanon– collected headcanons from myself and/or others.
*and unfortunately (or really, fortunately, in my opinion), some other fandoms are mixed into my tags because as pure as I try to keep this, other media/ideas/fandoms/etc. have found their way onto this blog bc of reasons. Good reasons.
//Okay, this needs to be answered OOC, because my Lestat would have to answer with my personal headcanon, b/c I think Mater is full of shit.
According to canon and Anne/Mater, her vampires do not experience sexual pleasure with their genitals. In QotD, Lestat calls his cock useless, claiming that it can no longer do what it was intended to, or some shit like that (I have a migraine and I’m not looking it up, but I’m sure @i-want-my-iwtv could give you the precise quote because she’s amazing).
Anne of course (typically) reneges on this when she wrote PL, creates a bunch of faulty science bullshit so that Lestat can jizz for science and create Viktor.
In fanon, it’s generally accepted that, yes, the vampires can have sex. There is some variation on this depending on what fic you are reading or who you are RPing with–but it’s generally agreed upon that vampire sex is 100% about the blood and sensuality, and that, even if they aren’t going to orgasm in the traditional sense, they are still going to get something pretty intense out of the entire situation.
There are some pretty amazing fics out there that make sense of all this, but since Vampire Chronicles fan fiction doesn’t technically exist, I can’t help you find them.
For my purposes, sure, Lestat has sex. Plenty of it. And it’s primarily about the blood. But there is also fun to be had with their bodies, and that’s more fun to write anyway, so there you have it.
ooc: ALL OF THIS. Also like… you can’t tell me that vampire sensation is 10x that of a human and expect me to believe that sensual touch does nothing for them. Maybe they can’t reach climax but that’s what the blood is for. Doesn’t mean sexual acts don’t work as amazing foreplay.
ooc: I’ve written about this before at some point I believe, but that’s very much my take on it too. Especially this: ‘you can’t tell me that vampire sensation is 10x that of a human and expect me to believe that sensual touch does nothing for them’
Hell yeah.
^Basically agreed with all 3 ppl here. Respect #Your headcanon may vary on this topic.
Canon doesn’t directly take on whether their dicks even work until the 3rd book, when Lestat says:
“I studied my reflection … and the organ, the organ we don’t need, poised as if ready for what it would never again know how to do or want to do, marble, a Priapus at a gate” – Lestat, Queen of the Damned
So I’ve discussed this topic at length in my tags for it: #asexuality, #asexual, #sex, #sexuality, #lets talk about sex. So check those out for more discussion on it. Ricean vampires still do feel sexual lust, it’s channeled through the experience of taking/sharing blood, and other sensually physical things.
In fanon there is a wide spectrum of whether they can have penetrative sex, some even speculate that their um… output… would be very bloody.
TL;DR: It all depends on your idea of what sex is. There are human couples who are unable (or do not want) to experience penetrative sex, and they can still be intimate with each other in other ways.
Claudia asks Louis about sex in IWTV, and he replies that it “‘…was something hurried…And… it was seldom savored… something acute that was quickly lost. I think that it was the pale shadow of killing.’”
He could have been lying a little to downplay it, so that she wouldn’t feel as bad for missing out on smtg she would never be able to experience, or maybe bc he truly felt that the experience of killing supercedes mortal intercourse. We don’t know bc #unreliable narrator.
ALL THAT SAID, if you prefer to take AR’s word as the gospel for canon, she has been definitive about it:
I think that reproductive obstacle (vampires are undead, they cannot carry a growing baby inside of dead flesh) is why Anne Rice made the choice that they could BE sexual, but not in a reproductive way.
*re-reads my own story*: Damn this is some good shit
*gets to the part where I stopped writing*: WTF WHERE’S THE REST OF IT HOW DO I GET MORE
Brain: You’re the author, if you want more you have to write it
Me: *flips tables*
Headcanon: What you think happened, based on the characters, settings, storylines and all reasonable extrapolations thereof.
Heartcanon: What you feel ought to have happened, quite divorced from rationality or sense.
Soulcanon: What you know happened, deep down in your soul, regardless of what anyone says. Including the creators of canon, themselves.
Crotchcanon: What your gonads wish had happened, or, alternatively, what turns you on.
Oh my goodness.
They forgot fanon which seems to be confused these days with canon…
So, what is “fanon” then?
//Fanon is stuff not in canon but that’s so prevalent in fandom that people have largely forgotten it’s not in the source material, ie, Daniel Molloy wearing glasses (which is Movieverse Canon, but literally never happens in the books). It’s headcanons that are extremely common or permeate the fandom so deeply it’s hard to separate them from canon, even if they never actually appear in the main material. (I think.. maybe someone else can explain it better.)
“The book never said it /didn’t/ happen” i say as I rub my little fangirl hands together.
Dear anon, this is an impossible question to answer a simple “Books 1-4″ or “Books 1-3, and then 5″ or such and so forth…
… as some ppl refuse to read Prince Lestat, or a bunch of the other books, won’t even give them a chance not that they all deserve a wholehearted chance necessarily…
Very good description. It really does depend on who you ask, I personally admit them all before Prince Lestat to be cannon, that last one went just a bit too far.
i I personally recommend that people read the first three books (IWTV, TVL, QOTD) and if they really enjoy it to try reading the rest of them.
But my caveat for that is that if they don’t care for Body Thief or Memnoch then still give Pandora and Vittorio a chance, then Armand, and if they enjoyed Armand and Pandora, to try Blood and Gold.
Its complicated, but so is the series, for such a seemingly straightforward concept of “vampires decide to write tell-all memoirs of their behind the scenes lives.”
Dear anon, this is an impossible question to answer a simple “Books 1-4″ or “Books 1-3, and then 5″ or such and so forth…
… as some ppl refuse to read Prince Lestat, or a bunch of the other books, won’t even give them a chance not that they all deserve a wholehearted chance necessarily…
Most of the fandom, in my experience, have had different gateway drugs to the series. I love collecting stories of how people first got into it (#I love these kind of stories tag). They first saw movie!IWTV or movie!QOTD and then read the corresponding book, or a friend gave them a random one from the series, or someone donated the whole series to them, etc. From there, some people read in order, some people skipped around.
PERSONALLY, I first started with IWTV and at that time (1994) the movie was out but being rated R, I was too young to see it, so I read the books that were available at the time (1-4), in order. I also snuck over to a friend’s house to see movie!IWTV when it came out on VHS (I’M OLD), which we watched repeatedly, and it attained this *~forbidden-fruit~* sort of connotation for me which has never dissipated.
Then I continued and just read the books as they came out. Hard to imagine, but there was a time when we waited, not knowing when the next book would come out, or if there would be another at all. AR originally intended to end the series at Memnoch the Devil, which is probably why it ends like this:
“Let me pass now from fiction into legend.
THE END
9:43 February 28, 1994
Adieu, mon amour.”
THAT SAID, if you want to make VC fanworks (including fic, meta discussion, fanart, etc.) or do VC RP, it seems to help if you’ve read at least IWTV, TVL, and TVA (TVA might spoil previous events in canon but it’s really THE authority on Armand)(and read some fanfic!).
I think those VC contain the crux of the fan fave characters (Lestat, Louis, ((Nicki)), Gabrielle, Armand, Daniel, Marius) and scenes that have had alot of impact in developing the main characters. Your fanworks/RP will be richer if you know the background of the characters, because you’ll be able to refer to the events, or quotes, or take them as a jumping-off point in your work.
However, in the later books, you get new info, new characters, and new perspectives on previous events (example: Claudia’s diary entry in QOTD is heartwrenching).
I-want-my-IWTV 