With The Vampire Lestat, Rice continues her scrutiny of the decline of religion and its effect on society. In the early pages of the novel she comments that in the 1990s "the Christian god was as dead as he had been in the 1700s. And no new mythological religion had risen to take the place of the old." Through her depiction of the vampire covens of the eighteenth century, she parodies their often mindless adherence to dogma in a way that clearly approximates the way she seems to feel some adherents unquestioningly accept the teachings of Catholicism. She shows that those who blindly follow the teachings of their religion cannot enjoy the many rewards of living in the secular world. Yet she makes clear that people need to believe in something, and when religion lets them down, they find a substitute.

Homosexuality is addressed subtly in...