Boekverslag Anne Rice

Geschreven door:	Gerard en Laura [meer]
Datum ingestuurd:	15 april 2003
Niveau:	vwo
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Opvragingen:	1539 (7 deze maand)
Waardering:	Currently 3.14/5 1 2 3 4 5 3.1/5 (7 stemmen)

Titel:	The vampire Armand
Auteur:	Rice, Anne
Jaar van uitgave:	1998

Auteur:	Rice, Anne
Nationaliteit:	Engels
Populaire titels:	1994Interview with the vampire (3) 1985The vampire Lestat (1) 1998The vampire Armand (1)

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Title: The Vampire Armand
Writer: Anne Rice
Pages: 520
What sort of book: Thriller

Main characters:
Armand (Amadeo):
17 years old when he became a vampire in the year 1499. 5 feet, 6 inches, beardless. Almost 500 years old. An angelic, boylike appearance, pretty as a girl. Brown eyes like amber, reddish locks. He's a bit bitter because of his experiences in life as a mortal and as an immortal. He feels lonely and doesn't really know how to deal with the changes of time. Armand is a vampire

Marius:
The maker of Armand. He is polite, gentle, good mannered, considerate. Long, yellow hair, cobalt-blue eyes. He is (was) the keeper of Those Who Must Be Kept. (They are the mother and father of all vampires) He bought Armand from slavetraders and named him Amadeo. (-which means beloved of God)

David Talbot:
Used to be the Superior General of the order of Psychic Detectives known as the Talamasca. A man of dark bronzed skin and dry, lustrous and thick black hair. A polite man, very smart, brown eyes. His body is about 20 years old. David himself is about 70 years old but he switched bodies because of a bodythief. He's a vampire

Secondary Characters:
Benji:
Dark-haired, round intense little Arab face, a spirited boy of twelve. Street smart, kind. He takes care of Sybelle.

Sybelle:
Tender willowy Sybelle, 25 years old, golden hair. Loves playing the piano and forgets everything around her when she's playing the piano. She's very good at it.

Riccardo: Black hair, black eyes. A sweet young man, about 17 years old.

Lestat:
Thick blond curly hair, blue eyes, six feet tall. He's impulsive and loves attention. Age 23. He's a vampire

Louis:
Black hair, about 25 years old, a kind and warm person, still very human.

Bianca:
The slender and beautiful courtesan, Bianca Solderini. Wavy hair and almond-shaped gray eyes. Generous and kind. Girlish face and tiny nose. Blond hair.

Lord Harlech:
Englishman. A fair freckle-skinned noble of the oldest French and English titles. Copper hair. Age; 25 He was also a bit mad.

Santino:
The leader of The Children of Darkness. (A group of vampires who worship Satan because they believe they can't be good, so they must be evil. They live under the ground) Black curly hair, large oval shimmering eyes

Relationships between main and secondary characters:
Benji and Sybelle are mortals and they love Armand. It's normal for vampires to have mortal pets. Riccardo used to be sort of a brother of Armand and lived, like Armand, with Marius. He loves Marius and Armand and would protect them no matter what.
Lestat and Armand are in a strange relationship. They love and hate eachother. Lestat and Marius, well, Marius thinks Lestat is a brat-prince. But in a good way.
Louis and Armand-Armand loved Louis a long time ago, he wanted Louis to show him the new world.
Bianca, Armand used to hide under her bed when he was drunk and afraid to go home. He loves her and she loves him too. Marius cares deeply for Bianca.
Lord Harlech-Armand had a relationship with him when he was angry at Marius. Lord Harlech is a bit mad and was going to kill Armand if he wouldn't be his. He almost succeeded. Needles to say, Marius isn't very fond of him.
Santino sees in Armand a leader for another coven of The Children of Darkness. Armand and Santino respect each other. He burnt Marius because, according to him, Marius wasn't living his life like a vampire should.

Where does the story take place:
New Orleans, Italy, Constantinople, Kiev Rus.

When does the story take place:
In 1497-1499 and 1998
This fact shows that the story takes place in the past and partly in the present.

Explain the title of the book:
The vampire Armand. It's Armand's life-story. All about Armand, which explains the title of the book.

Main theme of the book:
Fear (of being utterly alone) Love, the battle between good and evil in the soul. Death

Summary:

The story is about Armand. It starts in the present. Armand visits The vampire Lestat because he is laying in a coma, well sort of. There's a rumour that he's seen the Devil and Jesus. Anyway, Armand visits him with his mortal pets Sybelle and Benji. He leaves the two mortals with Marius because it is not the safest place for mortals to hang around. There are a lot of other vampires who visit Lestat that would kill the two just for fun.

David Talbot convinces Armand to write a book about his life. Armand is reluctant at first but gives in eventually. Armand dictates it and David will write it down.

(+/- 1490) When Armand was a young boy he was captured in the wild lands of his country and brought to Constantinople as a slave boy. Terrible things happened to him until one day, he was sold to a kind man, Marius. Marius brought him to Italy where he slowly began to trust his new Master and found happiness and love again not without an inner struggle though. Of course, Armand wonders why his Master is so different and why he only shows himself after sunset...

Armand gets a little disobedient after feeling rejected by Marius even though he did everything his Master asked of him, so he visits just about every tavern and he lets himself be seduced by an English nobleman, Lord Harlech. He stays with him for three days and when he's about to leave, Harlech tells him that if he does, he will kill him. Harlech is a bit mad. He leaves anyway, promising to return. Which Armand doesn't. Harlech is obviously not amused and one day shows up at Armand's house (Well, Marius' house actually) where he kills a few of the children that opened the door. Riccardo and Armand fight him. Harlech dies but does manage to wound Armand. Though it seems like scratches at first, it turns out that Harlech's blade was poisoned and quite deadly. Bianca takes care of the very ill Armand. He's busy dying when Marius returns and gives him blood so that he won't die. So now Armand is a vampire.

Armand wants to visit Kiev Rus, his birthplace, to see how his family is doing. Marius and Armand travel for 4 days and Armand finds his family.

They return and they live their lives happily for about seven months when all of a sudden Santino and the rest of The Children of Darkness set the house on fire and capture all of the children including Riccardo and Armand. But first Armand watches how Santino sets his Master on fire. (don't worry, he doesn't die) After that, Armand is forced to watch all of the children burn to death in a big fire, one by one, (except for Riccardo) They keep Armand in a prison where he can't drink any blood. Just when he's about to lose his mind from thirst, they feed him a young boy. Later he thinks he sees the ghost of the boy. After that they starve him again for a while. Armand is very hungry (or should I say thirsty?) when the cage opens and a mortal is pushed in Armand immediately drinks the young man's blood and when he's completely empty, Armand sees that the blood he drank was Riccardo's blood. The Children of Darkness didn't remove the dead body, they left it there in Armand's cell to remind him that he is indeed evil and that he should worship Satan like the rest of them. Armand gets brainwashed. Santino makes him the leader of a coven in Paris where he meets Lestat for the first time. (Lestat destroyed the coven by mocking their belief and showing them how stupid it was) Completely disillusioned, Armand tries to find his way in the new world. He deals with the changes by being the leader of the Theatre des Vampires.

Lestat has something to tell and lets all of his vampire friends (including Armand) know that he saw the devil and that he drank the blood of Jesus. He claims to have been to heaven and Hell and back to prove it he has a painting of Jesus. This is proof enough for Armand and he runs outside with it into the sun. Not a very smart thing to do for a vampire. Luckily he doesn't turn into ashes, but is blown into an old building. He is badly burned though. By some miracle, he's suddenly standing in a room where a man is about to kill a young woman who is playing the piano. A young boy is begging him to stop the man. He does and kills the man. After he kills the man, Armand is thrusted by an unknown force into that empty building where he's covered by ice. The piano music is the one thing keeping him alive and he telepathically asks Benji (the young boy) and Sybelle (the woman playing the piano) to help him out, which they do. He stays with them from that moment on because they have no one else.

Armand hears about Lestat in a coma and wants to visit him. The two mortals come with him and he leaves them with Marius so that they will be safe when Armand is with Lestat. When Armand is done, he's about to retrieve Benji and Sybelle when he hears a piano playing. He recognizes Sybelle's way of playing it but it's different in a way... He enters the house and there they are, Sybelle and Benji, both vampires. Marius did it because he knew how lonely Armand was and that Armand would never make the two into a vampire so he did it for him.

And that's how it all ends.

Opinion:

This book is very well written and I think that everyone should read it. And if you ever get sad because the book will end someday, don't worry all of Anne Rice's books are fantastic. The vampire Armand tells the story in a sad but beautiful way. I loved reading the story. It's written in a way you feel like you're actually right there, seeing, hearing, tasting and smelling everything. You can feel it. It's like you're living the story.