The spellbinding classic that started it all, from the #1 New York Times bestselling author—the inspiration for the hit television series

“A magnificent, compulsively readable thriller . . . Rice begins where Bram Stoker and the Hollywood versions leave off and penetrates directly to the true fascination of the myth—the education of the vampire.”—Chicago Tribune

Here...

All his life, Quinn Blackwood was haunted by a ghostly twin. When Quinn becomes a vampire, his evil double does too, leading Quinn to seek the vampire Lestat. Rice's masterful narrative flows from New Orleans to ancient Greece to 19th-century Naples.

"The novel opens with the Vampire world in crisis...vampires have been proliferating out of control; burnings have commenced all over the world, huge massacres similar to those carried out by Akasha in The Queen of the Damned... Old vampires, roused from slumber in the earth are doing the bidding of a Voice commanding that they indiscriminately burn vampire-mavericks in cities from Paris and Mumbai to Hong Kong, Kyoto and San Francisco. As the novel...

Lestat tells the story of the formation of the Blood Communion and how he became Prince of the vampire world and how his vision for all the Children of the Universe to thrive as one, came to be. The tale spills from Lestat's heart, as he speaks first of his new existence as reigning monarch -- and then of his fierce battle of wits and words with the mysterious Rhoshamandes, proud Child of the Millennia, reviled outcast for his senseless slaughter...