The Great Adventure of our Lives

“The great adventure of our lives. What does it mean to die when you can live until the end of the world? and what is 'the end of the world' except a phrase, because who knows even what is the world itself? I had now lived in two centuries, seen the illusions of one shattered by the other, been eternally young and eternally ancient, possessing no illusions, living moment to moment in a way that made me picture a silver clock ticking in a void: the painted face, the delicately carved hands looked upon by no one, looking out at no one, illuminated by a light which was not a light, like the light by which god made the world before He had made light. Ticking, ticking, ticking, the precision of the clock, in a room as vast as the universe.”

If you can guess where that wonderful quotation (not quote, please never call a quotation a quote!) is from, I applaud you.

If not, I shall tell you now; it is from Anne Rice's first novel of the Vampire Chronicles, The Interview with the Vampire.

I began reading this series... Probably about five years ago, yet sadly, I am only on the third novel, The Queen of the Damned.

Why, you might ask? Well, to put it simply, the first novel is a real bitch to read.

Now, don't get me wrong - the book itself is fantastic. Anne Rice has such beautiful writing, it's hard to find anything of the like.

What makes this book difficult to read is the structure of it. The book is quite literally an interview, with this boy Daniel being the interviewer and Louis de Point du Lac being the interviewee. So, what this means is, Louis will be talking forever and it appears to be a first person narrative, but then Daniel will suddenly jut in periodically throughout the book. I found this to be rather distracting, as it kept me from being too attatched to the story.

So, not only was the book hard to keep focused on, but it (well, all of Anne Rice's books) has so much content that if you stop reading it for a while, you will forget everything that just happened.


The quote that I began this post with is from the exact spot that I got stuck at for many years. I would read up to here, get distracted, then stop for a while. Note that it is only about a third of the way through the book. I tried many times to just start from that point, but again, I would easily forget everything that preceeded that point.

In the end, I was only able to finish the book on the 16-hour drives to and from Calgary. But man, was it fantastic.




So, to finish off todays post, I'll leave you with this:

The Interview with the Vampire is a great novel by Anne Rice which leads into a fantastic, must-read series. But be warned: It's a summer-read-only kind of book, not a read-it-when-I-happen-to-have-time book.



By for now, readers!



PS: The photos can be found at my old DeviantART account. My new DeviantART account, on the other hand, can be found here. C: