7 Angel Time (2009)

A Book That Coincides With Rice's Return To The Church

This is perhaps one of Anne Rice's less commercial novels, but those who enjoyed Interview with the Vampire's searing criticism of Christianity may find in this book some powerful and surprising context for Interview with the Vampire. The resonance of Lestat's criticism of religion in Interview with the Vampire can't be understated. Loss of faith and alienation in religious circles is a bold, humane theme for the show to dare to dive into, and hugely relevant to the queer community it is doing so well at representing.

Angel Time is the first book in Anne Rice's The Songs of the Seraphim book series, one which coincided with Anne Rice's return to the church. Readers of The Vampire Chronicles will be no stranger to Anne Rice's meandering ruminations on faith, with book five, Memnoch the Devil, giving what may be a closer approximation to this novel than the others in the series. Rice goes deep into redemption in this novel, examining it through the assassin main character. This is the kind of redemption Anne Rice explored for her vampires in the last few books in The Vampire Chronicles.

6 The Wolf Gift (2012)

A Possible Future Crossover For Interview With The Vampire

The Wolf Gift is the first of Anne Rice's The Wolf Gift Chronicles, which does for werewolves something similar to what The Vampire Chronicles did for vampires. Vampires had various gifts in The Vampire Chronicles, such as the cloud gift and mind gift. Anne Rice continues this logic here, as her lead character Reuben Golding discovers his new powers as a werewolf in this outlandish story. It has a slight flavor of the superhero genre to it in Reuben's exploration of his abilities, and has the erotic thriller elements that make Interview with the Vampire fun.

The Talamasca show coming up for Immortal Universe touches on the secret society evident in The Vampire Chronicles and Lives of the Mayfair Witches, but there's a chance it could adapt elements of The Wolf Gift Chronicles. There's no book based solely on this organization, so the show will have to pull content from somewhere. The Talamasca will most likely feature ample crossover with both Interview with the Vampire and Mayfair Witches, so getting ahead and reading The Wolf Gift before the new show comes out may be rewarding for Immortal Universe fans.

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5 Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt (2005)

A Book That Showcased Rice's Own Unique Spirituality

Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt is the first in a two-part book series chronicling the life of Jesus Christ. It is surprisingly one of the Anne Rice series that may actually have quite wide appeal, despite its narrow focus. It is one of Anne Rice's most beguiling publications, extraordinary even if only as a glimpse into the inner workings of her own, personal spirituality. For anyone invested in the religious themes in Interview with the Vampire, this is a must-read. It's not really too far removed from Anne Rice's other work in of content either, as the blurb establishes:

He is the supreme supernatural hero... the ultimate outsider and the greatest immortal of them all.

Anne Rice is, of course, talking about Jesus here, and she's making a sharp point about what all her heroes have in common. Anne Rice's vampires were all outsiders, and they became a metaphor for the LGBTQI+ communities that they represented. Anne Rice struggled to reconcile the church with its rejection of the LGBTQI+ communities all her life, and writing this novel, she was starting to formulate her own, unique spirituality that could stand independently of the church's problems. She created this historical novel that depicts Jesus' life from his own perspective.

4 The Claiming Of Sleeping Beauty (1983)

Anne Rice's First Novel In The Erotica Genre

Crystallizing Anne Rice's talent as a writer of steamy scenes, The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty is Anne Rice's first foray into the erotica genre, with literotica her sole pursuit in this kinky novel. It is the first of four in a series following the female protagonist Beauty, along with Alexi, Tristan, and Laurent, in their BDSM encounters. Written under the pseudonym A.N. Roquelaure, Rice only itted to penning this series in the '90s. It's not often a writer's 'best of' list includes both Christian literature and BDSM pornography, which speaks to the complexity of the psychological portraits in her work.

Written between the first Vampire Chronicle, Interview with the Vampire, and the second, The Vampire Lestat, this novel is the fascinating document of Anne Rice starting to break her stories out of repressed desire and into explicit, queer narratives with no holds barred. Anne Rice grew into this explicit language later in The Vampire Chronicles, which the TV show riffed on spectacularly. Those looking forward to the bloody homoeroticism continuing in Interview with the Vampire season 3 may well appreciate this series, but a trigger warning for sexual assault and adolescent sex activity must be applied.

3 Called Out of Darkness: A Spiritual Confession (2008)

Rice Analyzes Interview With The Vampire Through A Spiritual Lens

Anne Rice wrote a memoir in 2008 titled Called Out of Darkness: A Spiritual Confession, which logs her return to Christianity. Religion is an enduring theme in Rice's work, and her spiritual beliefs can be tracked across her fiction in their varying states. This is essential reading for anyone interested in how this applies in Interview with the Vampire and Mayfair Witches, plus the associated texts. Crucially, Anne Rice deals with Interview with the Vampire's anti-hero Lestat head-on in this book:

My hero, the Vampire Lestat, the genderless giant who lived in me, was always the voice of my soul in this novel [2002's Blackwood Farm] and it is no accident that he begins it with a cry of the heart, 'I want to be a saint, I want to save the souls of millions!' [But] by the end of the novel, confessing his failure ever to be anything but a rambunctious reprobate and Byronic sinner, he...resigned as the hero of the books which had given him life...This character who had been my dark search engine for twenty-seven years would never speak in the old framework again.

This is no small or insignificant sentiment. These words defined the cataclysmic change in The Vampire Chronicles that took place between 2003's Blood Canticle and 2014's The Prince Lestat. Rice had thought herself done with The Vampire Chronicles and Lestat around 2003-2008 after the religious epiphanies described in this memoir, but thankfully, she realized how wrong she was and eventually wrote The Prince Lestat. The change of direction in The Prince Lestat was jarring for some, especially combined with what seemed to be a slight shift in writing style, but the TV show has interestingly already adapted its character Fareed.

2 Vittorio the Vampire (1999)

Yet Another Successful Vampire Series

Anne Rice was writing The New Tales of the Vampires in the midst of writing The Vampire Chronicles, and thus was born Vittorio the Vampire. Outside of The Vampire Chronicles and Lives of the Mayfair Witches, the two tales in this vampiric book series are the most relevant reading for Interview with the Vampire fans. Vittorio is interesting in that he sees angels - angels are a thread that runs through Rice's work, notably in The Songs of the Seraphim. This novel is testament to the profound interrelatedness of all of Rice's work.

The deeper the reader is in the Anne Rice rabbit hole, the clearer it all becomes. Some will say that The New Tales of the Vampires are skippable, even for vampire and horror fans, whereas some out-and-out include both of them in The Vampire Chronicles. Vittorio is a standalone novel but exists in exactly the same universe as The Vampire Chronicles, so it does enrich the lore and world-building of that series and its characters. The new Talamasca show could always dip its toes into The New Tales of the Vampires, taking Vittorio as a subject of investigation for its paranormal detectives.

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1 Pandora (1998)

An Honorary Member Of The Vampire Chronicles

Pandora is nearly a Vampire Chronicle, if not an honorary member of the series, by virtue of its huge crossover points with the books. The novel makes a lot of references to The Vampire Chronicles, which aren't necessary to understand to enjoy it. Anne Rice's premiere vampire series involves Pandora in a fairly important way, but doesn't necessarily require reading this novel to grasp. Nonetheless, Interview with the Vampire fans making their way into the source material would do very well to pick up this book.

Pandora is actually key in the lore of Interview with the Vampire, forming a close relationship with Marius, who made Armand into a vampire. Armand and Daniel's story was starting to emerge at the end of Interview with the Vampire season 2, and Marius has been confirmed to be ing season 3, so Pandora may well the show at some point. Pandora is a great character and this novel is full of historical intrigue, tying into storylines from The Vampire Armand and Blood and Gold.

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Release Date

October 2, 2022

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AMC

Showrunner

Mark Johnson

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Based on Anne Rice's novel series that began in 1976, Interview with the Vampire is a gothic horror fantasy series that explores the life of Louis de Pointe du Lac through an interview with a journalist. Told through flashbacks of Louis' life during the interview, the series examines Louis' relationship with the vampire that turned him, Lestat de Lioncourt, and a teenage girl named Claudia, whom he turns. The series is the first of Anne Rice's Immortal Universe media franchise.

Writers

Rolin Jones

Seasons

2

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