Customer Reviews

Sips of Blood

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

This premise really had promise. The concept of the Marquis de Sade being "alive", forever walking the earth, was chilling and horrifying. Which crimes would he commit in this modern time? What would his view of our society be? However, the author didn't explore this fascinating aspect of the story. Instead, we were treated to some kinda weak (and not at all sexy) S & M that provided little insight into the characters and that didn't seem to DRIVE the story as much as BE the story. This wasn't enough to keep me riveted. I finished it, but the book is already in the "to be donated" pile. A disappointment.

The Marquis the Sade and his mother-in-law still among us -- as vampires! Well, I've read two biographies of the Marquis, and Sips of Blood is remarkably faithful to his character, and includes the occasional well chosen quote from Sade's own works. But beyond that, it's a riveting fantasy of blood and sex, with a surprising plot and delightfully twisted life-like characters. The haunting ending moved me to tears. Mary Ann Mitchell has done it again: another truly original novel.

How did this book win an award? The concept is high but the end result is low low low. The characters have no character, they are merely one-note johnnies: the Marquis is handsome & bad, his mother-in-law is domineering & bad, his niece is beautiful & good, the housekeeper's daughter is a ditzy teenager, the old man is a curmugeon, etc. The plot can only be described as feeble & seems to be there only as an excuse to describe the set pieces of (bad) s&m.The style is non-existent, the grammar & spelling are atrocious (the past tense of shine is "shone", by the way)and surely after 150 years the divine Marquis would have learned to use the English word for "dog", the French of which is inserted awkwardly & frequently along with a lot of other French words, just to remind us the French characters are from France. There seems to be a subgenre of s&m/vampire books; I keep hoping to find one of them that really works. I guess I'll keep looking; in the meantime, I'll just keep rereading Philosophy in the Bedroom. I recommend the author do the same.

Flesh and blood mix in this explicit tale of vampires and their victems. I expected an historical novel of vampires much like the Saint Germain and Dracula's wives series written by Chelsea Quinn Yarbo instead I found a moderm story filled with disfunctional humans and wickedly sensual vampires. Louis Sade is what you would expect vicious and controling. His mother in law is straight from hell and his lovely niece is so sad and lonely. She breaks your heart. The character development is the strength of this novel. The plot takes a while to come together. I would highly recommend this to adult vampire horror fans but I would not suggest it for teens.

Never one to pass up any vampire novel, I purchased Sips because the description seemed interesting. Vampires, Marquis de Sade, fetishism, yada yada yada. If this is a comedy, I give it 4 stars; however, I'll give it 1 star as a horror novel. Sade was rather boring; I would think a character as intense and multi-faceted as the Marquis de Sade would make for a more interesting vampire. The writing style isn't too bad, but overall I found the characters to be mildly amusing at best. The plot was thin, the end was anti-climactic, and the vampires were not very frightening. The book had little suspense, and it leaves a mile-wide opening for a sequel at the conclusion. I would, however, like to see something more of the vampire mutants lurking in the graveyard. They were the most riveting of any of the characters.

This story is about many kinds of horror; monsters, cruelty, even man's inhumanity to man.

Reading about De Sade was fascinating, but I found myself much more intrigued by his mother-in-law and niece (who were the nerve and the heart of the story for me). I also found the end to be satisfying, which is not always the case with tales of the undead.

It's a good read for those of us with a taste for VERY powerful women and who like to speculate about how historical figures would survive in our century.

Fans of Mitchell's first novel DRAWN TO THE GRAVE are definitly in for a shock with this one. Part vampire tale, part S&M saga, this story deals with the descendants of the Marquis de Sade. Even the most ardent vampire fans may be shocked by some of the intense bondage and torture scenes. Not as spooky as DRAWN, but a very original take on the Marquis de Sade, with some obscure vampiric night zombies tossed in for good measure. Mitchell has managed to once again pull off an original novel.....though maybe a bit too perverse for your average horror fan.

It was really great of Mitchell to use Sade as a character. it made it seem so much more realistic in terms of characters. The S&M scenes are very descritpive. I couldn't put it down! I read for hours on end without noticing the time. I've had friends borrow this book and they agree it is VERY interesting. The novel is very well-pieced together and it flows like bubbly champagne!

A vampire novel with the Marquis de Sade as one of the principal characters sounded interesting. I expected it to have a lot of sadistic sex, and it did. Soon, however, I got tired of the sadistic sex and started looking for the plot. After one-hundred and fifty pages, I was still looking. The characters here are all flat and stereotypical. Sade and his mother-in-law Marie are true to the historical accounts of them, but other than the fact that they hate each other and like to inflict pain on others, there wasn't really much to their characters. I also have to take issue with the description of Sade as attractive. I've seen pictures of him, and he was not at all good-looking. Liliana Plissay, Sade's neice, is a more interesting character, but there's not much more to her than the good-vampire-who-wants-to-be-human-again stereotype, and there's not enough of her story to drive the novel. I did like the zombie vampires, though. That was an interesting concept that I wish Mitchell had explored further. To sum up, this book was so bad that I started to wonder if Mitchell herself was a sadist, and this was her idea of a joke. As I see that there is now a sequel to this travesty of a vampire novel, I'm beginning to think that explanation more and more likely.

I LOVE IT! I could not put it down, it sucked me in from cover to cover. The characters are very well developed in this first book of a series, however, make sure you read this one first or the others (Quenched and Cathedral of Vampires) will make no sense to you at all. Kudos to angel's and algerina's posted reviews, I could not describe the book better myself.