Anne Rice makes no secret of her desire to do more than simply spin a good yarn. Her often wordy philosophical passages and her theorizing about everything from alienation to Zeitgeist fill her books with ideas that sometimes obscure the plot.

Her attitude about religions and their often detrimental effect on society and on individuals threads through nearly every chapter. Her aberrant characters — the vampire, mummies, and witches — personify her interest in the social outcast. They reflect her notion that those who question established religion may well be seen as being as alien in human society as are her vampires.

1. What are some similarities and differences between Lestat's rejection of Christianity and Rice's rejection of Catholicism?

2. What are some parallels between the collapse of the vampire covens and the breakdown of traditional religions?

3. Lestat says at one point that the twentieth century is a...