i started reading qotd recently and i want to know about your opinion on the tvc books in general, are they all worth reading? i do not have much interest in the Mayfair Witches so i do not interest in reading blackwood farm and merrick, i should read them anyway? sorry ik it's a kinda of "that's on you" answer to this question but i just wanna another vision on that
I will give you my thoughts on the books individually because it varies greatly lmao
Interview With The Vampire: Very good book and narratively the strongest. However I find that since the show I enjoy it less, which isn't a reflection on the book itself but rather a result of the show taking all of the further character development Anne did a decade later and incorporated it into the original story which makes it come alive in a completely different way.
The Vampire Lestat: Good up until about 20 pages into Marius getting involved. Unfortunately I am in the camp of just finding Marius' section of this book incredibly dull, to the point that for a long time I thought Marius was a boring character until I got back to tva and b&g (and mind you this happened retroactively. I read tva before tvl and loved Marius as a character and then this book made me hate him for a while π). He's not boring, it's just that 40% of this book is ass π The rest of it is really good though.
Queen of the Damned: GREAT!! BEST BOOK IN THE TRILOGY!! is it insane? yes. is the plot all over the place? yes. is it awesome? YES
Tale of the Body Thief: This is the kind of book that is more enjoyable in hindsight than when actually reading it. The plot is funny but actually reading it was a fucking slog for me.
Memnoch the Devil: borderline unreadable dogshit but Armand's 4 scenes are good.
Pandora: If you're gonna choose to read anything outside of the main vampire chronicles series, make it this. Pandora is really cool.
The Vampire Armand: one of the best vampire stories ever written unironically (am I biased? yeah, but I think it's true)
Merrick: unreadable dogshit
Blood and Gold: EYE really like this book and I think it's worth reading if you are either interested in Marius or you are pursuing a qualification in Armand Understanding. Even outside of Armand though there are a lot of really interesting characters in here and if nothing else it's basically a comedy of errors as Marius de romanus fails at just about every task he sets out to achieve.
Blackwood Farm/Blood Canticle: I've been burned before and now I simply refuse to expend valuable time and energy on books in this series that do not contain Armand so I cannot comment on them.
The Prince Lestat Trilogy: I own them, I plan to read them, I just haven't gotten around to it yet. But when I do you can trust I will be blogging the experience.
Anyway my answer is basically: I don't think there are any books in the series that you have to read. Anne Rice loves an exposition dump so any books you skip will still be summed up for you in the rest of the series. It's a pick n mix baby.