Just finished watching the first episode of the second series in AMC’s Anne Rice universe and I’m pretty hooked in so far. I was concerned when I first heard they’d be adapting these books, since they’re pretty problematic with all the incest and child sexuality she wrote into them. They seem to be trying to write their way around that so far, since in this version Rowan’s father is a one-night stand her mother Deirdre meets at a party, rather than her being the product of Deirdre being raped by her Uncle Cortland.
We only get to see a little bit of Lasher in the premiere, but I’m very impressed by the actor so far. He’s handsome and charming, but also comes off as manipulative and abusive. He’s very much like I imagined him when I read the books. The scene where Rowan kills the Elon Musk type who’s showing off how important he thinks he is and how little he thinks of everyone else in the world was also a nice touch.
I have not read the books and know nothing about the characters or story. (Unlike ”Interview With the Vampire” where I had already seen the film and read the three main books.) I’m just watching this one because I’m a fan of Jack Huston, who plays Lasher.
I read the three Vampire books. I thought the first one was a slog and was hard to get through. The plot kept me going even though the pacing was so slow. The next too books were better. The Witch book was painful to read. Like wading through molasses. The TV show would have to have different pacing so that shouldn’t be a factor.
I am missing Michael Curry and the Aaron Lightner characters- I can see why they combined them into another character but its still a little less of a story without them . I also didn’t like that Rowan seemingly only recently acquired any powers, in the books , she had them as a child and I thought that her knowledge of that possibility and actively trying to prevent (or not) using it was more interesting. I’ll hang on for the ride though- Carlotta & Courtland seem sufficiently in character and awful and I knew the book had some lines you probably can’t cross on tv so I’m fine with those types of changes.
I was going to read the witches books, but the first was so awful – not a slog, although it was – so much as really really bad and badly written.
It was like reading a Harlequin romance with a sprinkling of witchiness added. The two protagonists were such paragons of perfection it made me barf. Just really bad.
Presumably the series won’t have a 300-page filibuster while the male lead reads about the entire 400-year backstory of the Mayfair family. I don’t know how Rice’s editor let her get away with that - even Stephen King wasn’t being allowed to shove that much bloat into his novels at the time.
Teenage me trudged through it because I was tired of hearing my mom and sister go on and on about the books with each other all the time and wanted to know what they were so excited about, and stuck with it even though I found the entire mom-porn erotica aspects of the books, which were clearly the selling point, to be a distraction from the plot I actually cared about.
They managed to work two sex scenes into the premiere, so they’re definitely not dropping that aspect, though it was less explicit than something you’d have seen late at night on Cinemax in the '90s.
Second episode is solid. You can see in this one that they’re making a few more changes to the story from the books, but not diverging by too much. The Deirdre/Lasher/Rowan sex scene was one of the weirder things I’ve seen on TV.
I found it a little amusing that, during the opening flashback to Suzanne Mayfair, they subtitled everyone even though they’re all speaking English. Early modern Scots English isn’t that incomprehensibly thick. When Deirdre summons Lasher, she uses the classical Latin pronunciation rather than Church Latin, which I liked.
I think the house they’re using as the Mayfair House is the same real-life house that Anne Rice based the house in the books on, which is a very nice touch.
Too late for the edit window: the ending of this episode was NOT what I was expecting.
Presumably Deirdre’s killer was whoever stopped the elevator at the sixth floor while Rowan was waiting. Did Carlotta use her powers to strike her down, perhaps? Or did Lasher decide he didn’t need her anymore now that Rowan is present and aware of who she is, since he already seems to know that she’s the Mayfair who’ll be able to give birth to a Taltos? Those seem like the likeliest possibilities to me.