Customer Reviews

Blood and Gold

5 star:		(78)
4 star:		(47)
3 star:		(38)
2 star:		(26)
1 star:		(22)

 

 

I know when a book by Anne Rice is good or not. If it is good, I am not able to stop reading her book. If it isn't like "Merrick" was, then I will stop reading it altogether. "Blood and Gold" was an irresistable read for me. I thoroughly enjoyed every single page in this new installment of the Vampire Chronicles. I was so disappinted in "Merrick" I didn't even bother finish reading it because the storyline was not very compelling for me to read. To see that Anne Rice picked up where she left off with Armand's story with Marius' story I did not hesitate to pick up "Blood and Gold".

Most Anne Rice fans would know that we were given a brief glimpse of Marius' life in "The Vampire Lestat", the second book in the Vampire Chronicles series. "Blood and Gold" delves further into Marius' past which delighted me since he is one of my favorite characters. The reader is introduced to other vampires other than Mael, Pandora and Armand, like Bianca, Euxodia, and Avicus. "Blood and Glory" shows the anguish that Marius went through with his separation from Pandora. I didn't know that in "The Vampire Lestat" or "Queen of the Damned". In fact he was downright obsessive when he was finally reunited with his beloved Pandora.

Unlike in the stories about Pandora and Armand, Marius wasn't talking to David Talbot, the former Talamasca leader which was interesting. Instead the reader is introduced to a new character by the name of Thorne who was just as old as Maharet and Mekare, the twin sisters from "Queen of the Damned". Thorne wakes up from his sleep in an icey cave and winds up in a tavern talking to Marius, and eventually moving to Marius' house where Marius tells Thorne his life story.

I really enjoyed "Blood and Gold". I rank it as one of my all time favorite books in the Vampire Chronicles. After being disappointed with "Merrick" and somewhat bored (still entertained) with "The Vampire Armand", "Blood and Gold" rekindered my fascination with Anne Rice's popular vampire series. I couldn't put this book down when I first read it.

Blood And Gold is the story of Marius, one of the oldest vampires in the Anne Rice mythology. He's been around since the early days of Rome and he was the creator of the vampires Pandora, Armand and Bianca. He was also the keeper of Enkil and Akasha, the King and Queen of Vampires.

Now, his very interesting story - which spands hundred of centuries - finds it's way to the page. I was very excited to get this book. After all, I wanted to read Marius's story in its entirety for so long! But the problem with the book is that we've seen most of this before. Marius has been a prominent character in many of Rice's books; from The Vampire Lestat to The Queen Of The Damned to Pandora to The Vampire Armand... Rice has already told us a lot about Marius in those novels. We already knew half of his story.

So we end up with Blood And Gold, a book which is half new and half repetition. Everything that happened in The Vampire Armand is retold through these pages. The book isn't very original.

And yet, Rice finds a way to enthrall the readers. Her poetic style of writing is as griping as ever and her tormented Marius is her most complex and interesting vampire after the beloved Lestat. The book does offer the reader many new exciting moments (such as Marius's encounter with Mael and the making of a young female vampire, as well as the destruction of an all-powerful female vampire). So overall, the book is very interesting and very entertaining. It's just too bad that it leaves you with this sense of deja vu.

In "Blood and Gold," readers once again meet a modern-day vampire and then flash back to the past to discover their past. This time around it is the ancient vampire, Marius, who gets the biographical treatment from Anne Rice. Given his age and importance in vampire genealogy, Marius has made many appearances in past Rice novels. As other reviewers have noted, this leads to some retread over material covered earlier in the series. This is not necessarily a bad thing. We are given a new perspective (or is it revisionist history?) and also a refresher course for those of us who read the original stories many years ago.

Overall, "Blood and Gold" is a slight improvement over more recent installments of "The Vampire Chronicles." While Marius clearly takes the crown as "king of vampire angst" in this volume, he is a much more bearable character than he was in "The Vampire Armand." Rice adds more pieces of the puzzle as Marius travels across Europe through the centuries and deals with the usual dysfunctional relationships with his fellow immortals. After the leisurely exploration of Marius' life, the ending seems a bit rushed. We are given a "Cliff Notes" recap of Marius' storyline from "The Vampire Lestat" and "Queen of the Damned" and then catapulted back to the present day for some vampire vigilante justice.

Ultimately this is another mixed bag for Rice fans (those who have not read Rice should definitely not start here). With all the groundwork already established, it seems an impossible task for Rice to ever write a "Vampire Chronicles" that is equal in energy and excitement to the earlier installments. But not unlike her protagonists' thirst for blood, Rice aficionados' desire for new/more tales are likely never to be quenched.

From his first appearance in _The Vampire Lestat_, Marius has been one of my favourite of Anne Rice's characters. _Blood and Gold_, which purports to be Marius' story told in his own words, unfortunately goes a long way to proving that a good supporting character does not a leading man (or vampire, as the case may be) make.

I was not expecting much from this book, as, in my opinion, the Vampire Chronicles have seriously deteriorated from their excellent beginnings into a haphazard mishmash flecked with occasional points of interest. Even so, I was disappointed. In the first place, there was nothing really new here. Every major event has already been related in far more detail in previous volumes, and Marius' personal perspective does not really add any new dimension. For a being who has been around for 2000 years (give or take), Marius comes across as surprisingly un-introspective and divorced from his own experience. As a supporting player, Marius has always struck me as one of the most "human" of the immortals, so the lack of deep human feeling in his personal story clashed with the character as I have come to understand him. In fact, it seemed to me that Marius was revealed as an emotional adolescent, always attaching himself to the unavailable in order to find some justification for his existence. It just didn't add up.

One thing I was looking for was some explanation of Marius' sudden about-face regarding the proper age one should have reached before being turned. While some attempt was made to address this, it was distinctly unsatisfying, leaving me wondering why, if he had been convinced all along that vampires were best made from young humans, he had ever claimed the opposite. Once again, it gave the impression that Marius has lived much of his life without intent or thought, simply allowing himself to be blown wherever the winds of fate happened to carry him.

The ending was totally incomprehensible, not in terms of events, but in terms of underlying logic. Although it seemed pretty clear that what happened in the last ten or so pages was what Rice meant this book to accomplish, I didn't quite get why or how the story to that point led up to it. It almost seemed to be the ending from some other story tacked on.

I was interested in Thorne, the mysterious Northern vampire who provided Marius with an audience. I wished we could have known more about him, as perhaps that may have made his actions at the end of the book make some kind of sense. But his story was sadly neglected; we only got hints. I thought this was a sorry oversight.

All in all, B&G took a character whom I had liked and transformed him into someone I didn't like much at all and ignored potentially interesting threads in favour of a rehash of all-too-familiar events. I can't recommend it, either to Rice fans or to those new to the series.

Having found the first four Vampire books absolutely riveting, I was a tad disappointed here: "B and G" is not as tightly written, the characters are not quite as compelling and the plot is more episodic and meandering. Just the same, I enjoyed it. Marius, the Blood Drinker with the soul of an artist, succeeds and suffers mightily across the centuries, but heroically stays true to his creed. Yet, because of his supercharged powers and all too human weaknesses, his relationships unravel as they might for you or me, but in epic proportions. So in many ways Marius seems the least strange and most accessible of the Blood Drinkers, all throughout The Chronicles. Also, the book features wonderfully detailed depictions of life in ancient Rome and Constantinople, Renaissance Italy, and 18th century northern Europe-a great treat for the historically minded reader. Definitely a worthwhile read!

Before you read any more from me, I will repeat what I say to anyone who wants to read any book in the Vampire Chronicles: You MUST read them all, in order, or the story can tend to have holes in it. Remember, this is a Chronicle, and reading from the end or middle first is not going to be helpful.

Having said that, I must say that I was pleasantly surprised by this book. It had everything in it that I expected, but it also had more. The story of Marius; everyone knew that was what this book was all about. A few more details to fill in the gaps from the previous books. Perhaps to make it all a little more clear. What we get is that and much more.

Not only is his story told here, but we also learn about the man. His fears and doubts, the lies he has been telling himself for 2000 years and the fears that he still has trouble verbalizing. Marius is an immortal who is every bit the human he was before he was taken to the Druid grove and made a blood drinker. Even 2000 years hasn't been able to remove his humanity. This is what I always suspected of Marius, but there was never any way to confirm it in either deeds or words.

This is not to say that this is all there is in this book. The details that were missing from the story of Marius and Pandora, and Marius and Armand, are filled in here. There is never a true story about a relationship when only one side is heard. We now have Marius' side of the story, which makes some of the things that were confusing much clearer. We also have the proof of Marius' need for others, be they mortal or immortal. And the answer to the biggest tease from "The Vampire Armand" is a twist that I did not expect, and thoroughly enjoyed.

Yes, there is no Lestat, no Louis, no David, but there are others who do not appear until the end, but this is the only place they could have appeared.

Though some may call him inconsequential, the character Thorne is anything but. He is a vital and necessary character from start to finish. This is a story told in the first person, and for that to happen, there needs to be a story teller and a listener. Thorne, as the listener, is a perfect character.Without Thorne, there is no way for Marius to tell his story. And, in the most surprising ending of any of the books in the Chronicles, Thorne plays a most dramatic and important role.

In summation, this is not the best book in the Chronicles, but it is far from the worst. I would recommend this to any fan of Anne Rice's Vampire Chronicles. But as I said at the beginning, if you haven't read the whole series, a lot of this may be confusing.

I enjoyed this book, except for the subplot about the Norse vampire, Thorne, at the beginning and end. This frame story had a lot of promise but ended up making little sense to me. I think maybe it alludes to Norse myth, which has never been my forte. Whatever the reason, it left me scratching my head.

But at least it gets Marius telling his life story, and perhaps because the "interviewer" is a stranger, he feels comfortable opening up about all sorts of things. In the words of Alanis Morissette, it's "strangely exciting, to watch the stoic squirm." Yes, at times Marius's story seems really familiar, since most of the major plot events have been told already in _The Vampire Lestat_, _Pandora_, and _The Vampire Armand_. But now we know just how broken-up Marius was about some of the tragedies in his "life". We find out how much he loved Pandora, and how much he had to lean on a certain other vampire (I'll avoid the spoiler) after Santino burned him. I especially love the fact that his recollection of his brief reunion with Pandora is so very different from Pandora's version. Pandora says the Indian vamp was a jerk and that she didn't love him; Marius believes the two were codependent as heck. And Marius breaks someone else's heart that night as well. Even the letter, lost for fifty years, is different between the two books.

In short, this is a pretty good book. You may feel like you've read all this stuff before, but if you pay close attention, you'll get to see the other side of the cool, logical Marius.

I am a huge Marius fan, and I awaited this book for the longest time. I was not disappointed! Rice begins the tale slowly, a sometimes frustrating habit she tends to have with most of her books, but the writing soon picks up the pace as we go back in time over 2,000 years to the time of Marius de Romanus, a Roman scholar taken, by force, during the prime of his mortal life into the beginning of his immortal life.

Marius, intent on finding the answers to his questions about his new lifestyle, heads from the barbarian lands to Egypt, where the horrible answers to his questions fall into his hands in the form of the statuesque Akasha and Enkil, the parents of all vampires. Thus Marius becomes their unwitting keeper.

We follow Marius in his travels throughout the ancient world, and his rocky romance with his first and most prominent love throughout the entire tale, Pandora, a girl from his mortal days whom he is forced to bring into his world of vampirism. Rice, sadly, spends very little time on their 200-year life together in ancient Antioch, most likely because that was nearly the entire plotline of her earlier book "Pandora."

After leaving Pandora, Marius travels once more about the ancient world, tortured with nightmares of his lost love, and ends up falling into a deep slumber, awakening again in Renaissance Italy where he meets his second love, a noblewoman by the name of Bianca, and creates his next child Amadeo (Armand). Perhaps the largest portion of the book is spent on Marius's life in Renaissance Italy, yet after a near brush with death and Amadeo's kidnapping by Christian cultist vampires, Marius and Bianca are forced to flee.

The couple wander aimlessly about Europe, though Marius has a secret mission to find his first love Pandora who is rumored to be in Dresden. Though when he finally finds her, their reunion doesn't turn out the way he had hoped.

Marius is perhaps one of the saddest vampires of Rice's creation, because the most disasterous and heartbreaking things continually happen to him, but he is extremely resiliant, and things work out for him at the end of the book, which has surprise twist even I did not see coming, with the return of the red-haired twins from "Queen of the Damned."

Anne Rice is back, Anne Rice brings us one more volume of the Vampire Chronicles.

Her multilayered style is just as good as, or even better than usual. A tale in the tale in the tale. We jump from the present to the past, and then to a distant past, and then to a recent past. We jump from Marius to Thorne, to Mael, to Avicus, to Pandora, to Makare and Maharet.

She jumps into Marius as the main story teller and we recognize episodes that have already been told from here Pandora's point of view, there Armand's point of view, overthere Lestat's point of view. We recognize and yet rediscover them, since the story line is the same but the point of view is all poweful to give a completely different vision.

The vision here is dominated by Marius and his immense sense of passion. He tells us his life of fabulous passion for mortals, for blood drinkers, for Akasha, the Queen, and the systematic loss it leads to every single time. He always creates and prompts his own loss out of his absolute passion by being extremely dominating and flying into anger and possessiveness all the time.

Anne Rice reveals that loce is possible among blood drinkers, a love that finds its realization in blood sharing.

Marius opens up our eyes to the painting and arts of the Italian Renaissance, first of all to Botticelli. This is a habit in her novels now. She skips though over the Dark Ages, the Middle Ages that she does not know enough, particularly the romanesque period and the very difficult and intelligent blending of the Christian faith into the old Celtic tradition. That makes her miss a point : the Renaissance is a movement back to ancient Roman and Greek mythology, because it is the only way to go beyond what has been achieved in the Middle Ages. To go beyond because it leaves the field of representations entirely grounded in the earth, the old Celtic earth, and it reaches for the vision of life that is entirely inspired and inhabited with light. But this obsession of light is contained in the Celtic faith, though marginally ; it is contained in the gothic style that shifts from the romanesque pilgrimage from worldly darkness to celestial light, to the elevation from dark earth to heavenly light, from an horizontal progress to a vertical ascension. The Renaissance just brings light into the artistic vision, as the core of this vision.

Anne Rice finally is an enchanteress with her style. It is a real miracle to listen to that style where she uses some plain words or stuctures to create linguistic life. For more curious people I will just quote here the numerous postposed adjectives, the subtle use of to with look instead of at (giving dynamism to a very static look at), or the use of the preposition unto which is little common in our language. All this creates a prodigiously dynamic style and music.

A masterpiece that should be read by everyone under the sun, or, if you prefer, under the stars.

Dr Jacques COULARDEAU

Having read each and every book in the chronicles, I cruised along the last several. In fact, nothing since book #3, Queen of the Damned, grabbed me as did this one. Blood and Gold fills in the gaps of old stories, gives you different perspectives on the events that we've read. The tales of the vampires, seen through my favorite vampire, Marius, was compelling and a very exciting read. I've always preferred reading the ancient histories and this book contains all the familiar faces, Maharet and Mekare for a short while, Pandora, Armand, Mael, Santino and of course Those Who Must Be Kept.

A short portion in the middle was all too similar to a recent novel, The Vampire Armand. While she spun her tale from the eyes of Marius, it felt all too familiar, and I spent several chapters saying, 'I KNOW!' However, this was brief, and I was soon thrust back into the story. Other tales are recounted with the familiarity one might have after reading the first half dozen or so novels, but all was done carefully and I found myself recalling so many little things from prior stories. Putting the pieces together, seeing it all as I had never seen it prior. Construcing an even larger, more complete world of these vampires!

Perhaps this is only for those who have kept up with the series, or at least read the first 3 novels of the Vampire Chronicles. You needen't have read the later entries to get into this book. I would recommend the first 3 though, the classic tales! It might be confusing if you haven't read those, but everything since isn't necessary.

If you've gotten through the recent books, Vampire Armand, Pandora, Vittorio and want more, then get this. If you were at all losing interest in these stories as I was, I still recommend Blood and Gold. I won't spoil the ending at all, but I was certainly moved and emotionally affected by the tale. Perhaps I've become too involved in Marius, as I said, he's my favorite vampire to read...but overall I think this is Rice's best work in many many years!