Customer Reviews

The Vampire Vivienne (Vampire Legacy, #5)

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

"I was not always the demon in the mirror." What a great hook, and Karen E. Taylor's fifth entry into her Vampire Legacy does not let you down. Her characters are fully developed, and it is obvious that she knows them very well.

Never having read any of The Vampire Legacy books, this was a real feast. Vivienne Courbet is a beautiful young woman who recognizes the power of staying young forever, and embraces her new life with zest. Her nearly three hundred years of exploits are chronicled in this book. Vivienne has deep emotions and that makes her very real. Yes, Vampires do have emotions, or Taylor has convinced me that they exist as sensitive monsters. Not all are sensitive . . . as we soon discover.

Max and Victor -- are they good or bad vampires? That may seem an odd question until you meet Vivienne's lost love. Diego is vicious, he loves the kill, and he must be destroyed. The hatred she feels at his death poisons her thoughts, and she returns to the House of the Swan in Paris. When the French Revolution claws and beheads their way through the aristocracy, she refuses to believe they mean "her." Enter Eduard DeRouchard. Passion fills their nights from their first gaze. He is not the perfection our lusty heroine believes him to be; we see that he is too good to be real, but love's first blush is blind. Additionally, a jealous vampire is dangerous.

This book is part of the history of The Vampire Legacy. Travel with Vivienne from Paris in 1719 to the present day New Orleans. Definitely, a "must" for the Legacy fans. This is an excellent escape for those of us who still have such delights in our reading future.

Five golden stars for a master story teller.

Victoria Tarrani

There are vampire novels and romance novels and historical novels and even historical vampire romance novels. As a rule I don't read many of them. Then there are Karen E. Taylor novels. Unless she has some hidden away in her desk (you never know), I've read all of them at least twice. This is not quite as odd as it may seem, because if I happen to like a book there's no telling how many times I'll read it.
THE VAMPIRE VIVIENNE, the fifth book in Ms. Taylor's Vampire Legacy series, has managed to surprise me, and I don't surprise easily. The cast of characters includes several we know from her previous books, so the novel has a warm and familiar feel to it. This in itself is surprising, because THE VAMPIRE VIVIENNE is a departure from Ms. Taylor's previous novels. The universe of the Vampire Legacy stories is expanding.
To begin with there are new characters: Monique and Eduard, both of whom we meet in eighteenth century France, come to mind immediately - and there are Others. There are definitely Others.
Characters we know from Ms. Taylor's previous novels are given much greater depth: the enigmatic Max (a personal favorite of mine), Victor, and of course Vivienne Courbet herself. We follow her for three centuries.
What kind of person - what kind of vampire - is capable of surviving in a hostile and dangerous world for more than three hundred years? I started this book with very definite ideas and assumptions about that. Ms. Taylor's imagination has proved itself broader and deeper than mine. The growth and development of the vampire Vivienne is not what I expected after reading the first four Vampire Legacy novels.
For a few pages I had trouble believing what I was reading. Then, barely noticing the change, I had trouble not believing it. Vivienne Courbet is someone other than I had expected. Someone much more interesting.
I can think of no way to explain why THE VAMPIRE VIVIENNE is a compelling and thoroughly entertaining novel without revealing too much of the plot. You'll simply have to read the book yourself. After that your reaction may be the same as mine: I want to read the next book in the series _now_.

Up front: I don't like vampire fiction (or horror in general) and almost never read it. My idea of Hell is being forced to read the entire collected works of Ann Rice.

So when THE VAMPIRE VIVIENNE was given to me, I opened it with no confidence at all that I would be able to get past the first chapter or two. But Karen Taylor is a professional colleague whose talents I greatly respect, so I gave it a try.

What followed could serve as the definitive example of the phrase "pleasantly surprised." I LOVED it.

Why? I think because the characters - and this is unique among the vampire books I've tried to read - are fully realized, believable people, not just melodramatic constructs. Most of the vampire-novel characters I've seen are about as credible as the cast of a soap opera. Karen Taylor, however, makes hers come alive; I feel I KNOW them. (Some of them better than I would prefer, actually. This is a very scary book in places - precisely because you can believe in the characters, their relationships and motives, and that makes the menace much more real.)

It seems strange to speak of one of the Undead as a living, breathing personality (I almost said "full-blooded", aaghh) but you know what I mean.

This is also a very erotic book - not in the all-too-common soft-BDSM-porn sense, but in a subtler, more elegant way. I confess to having the hots for Vivienne. She can bite me any time.

Buy this book and read it. Ignore the people who complained because they couldn't understand the plot, or because it didn't fit the traditional (i.e. hackneyed) vampire-fiction templates. This is a hell of a book. Karen Taylor is a hell of a writer.

"The Vampire Vivienne" is really the fifth volume in Karen Taylor's Dierdre Griffin tales. While it is told from the viewpoint of Dierdre's blood sister Vivienne Courbet, it's real intent is to provide some vital background and a smooth transition to the next phase of this vampire series. As is often the case when an author begins to move in new directions, the story's new focus is not completely comfortable to a regular reader. This is to be expected, since Vivienne is quite different from Dierdre. But patience is rewarded, and the story has much to interest.

Taylor starts the story in Paris in 1719, when a rebellious young girl, Vivienne, flees from her oppressive home life to the city. She is both adventurous and exquisitely beautiful, and so quickly finds herself in demand at the House of the Swan, a very upscale bordello. Soon she meets Max and Victor, the owners of the Swan and, with no resistance at all, they draw her into life as a vampire. 50 years later Vivienne is in Spain with he friends when Diego, her own childe, proves dangerous and must be killed. In the aftermath of that problem, Vivienne decides to return to Paris, this time as the mistress of the Swam. The final setting of the Parisian segment is at the beginning of the Reign of Terror. In sight of the ominous guillotine Vivienne comes to love to others - Monique her secretary, who will become a vampire and then desert her, and Eduard DeRouchard, physician to royalty and doomed to be another victim of the infernal machine of the revolution.

In dismay Vivienne flees to the New World. Many years later, we find her in present day New York. She has assumed control of the Cadre, an organization of vampires, created by Victor and Max, that serves to provide all its members with the resources and influence needed to survive. Monique has returned as well, and all is forgiven. Vivienne is caught up in preparations for a masquerade at her night club, Dangerous Crossings. The theme of Dangerous Crossings is the same borderline S&M that Laurell Hamilton introduces in Jean Claude's clubs, dark and sexy. But the atmosphere at Dangerous Crossings is doomed to be short lived, for the masquerade turns into a nightmare that endangers the unliving everywhere. Vivienne finds herself confronted with an impossible opponent, one that she cannot kill.

Despite the temptation to compare, Karen Taylor's books have little in common with Laurell Hamilton's sexy horror stories or Tanya Huff's occult detective stories. Her heroines have punch, but they also have considerable finesse. All of her characters are vivid, and there is little wasted narration. Taylor also adds a dash of Anne Rice styling to her stories, which is especially visible in the Paris portion of "The Vampire Vivienne. The entire series is quite readable, and perennially popular with enthusiasts, especially those who like a dash of romance and sex mixed in with their vampire thriller.

Having already been a fan of the series, I looked forward to this book with anticipation. I have to say that it surprised me with how different it was from the other books and also how good it was. Vivienne, who has always been a supporting character gets her spotlight and lives (if you will pardon the expression) up to it. This book builds on the other 4 books, but also takes detours of its own to the French Revolution and visits with familiar characters as they were in the past. Contrary to some of the reviews here, I find that this book has much more plot that the previous installments and it is my personal favorite of the series.

This is a wonderful book. If you've read all of the books in The Vampire Legacy, they you need to pick this book up and continue the voyage. If you haven't started this series, then you need to do so now.

This chapter of the series, Vivienne is the main focus. The reader will learn of her life, death, and her life as a vampire. Her loves, passions, and the reader will also learn of her heartaches. The reader can't help but to feel a wide range of emotions as we read about Vivienne.

As the story opens, the reader is enjoying the life we are lucky enough to share with Viv. Then about 1/2 was through something happens...someone is killing the members of The Cadre (don't know what that is? Then you need to start from the first book and work your was through the series) and wants to kill the vampires. Wth the help of some old friends, Vivienne must somehow stop a creature that's not human, but at the same time, not a vampire....but something to the likes that Vivienne has never seen.

Karen Taylor dilevers a wonderful story, as usual. Her characters are life like and you just can't help but to care about them. As the series goes on, you feel as if your seeing old friends.

Taylor's writing style keeps the reader glued to the book. The description she lays out for the reader is stunning. If you haven't read any of the series, I suggest you start with the first one, and enjoy the ride. I'm doing it now.

At the end of Vivienne, it says that there will be a new chapter in The Vampire Legacy coming out in the fall of 2001. I can't wait to see what happens next.

The Vampire Legacy keeps getting richer and richer. In the latest entry (#5), we turn to Vivienne, the current "leader" of the Cadre. This is Vivienne's life story from birth in pre-Revolutionary France to the present and, also, a deeper look into Ms. Taylor's vampire mythos. In order to not give spoilers, I won't give much detail, except to say that the narrative is full of twists and turns. As with Ms. Taylor's other works, the characterizations are first-rate, but in the Vampire Vivienne we get more developed plotting and a number of new and memorable characters. These books are so vivid and cinematic, when do we get a movie?

I thought Ms. Taylor's choice to continue the story from Vivienne's point of view was a great idea. It gives the reader more background information on another of her intriguing characters and continues (in Part 2) to tell what becomes of the future of the cadre. In all, it was a good, light read; however, I felt that most of the book didn't have much plot. And I like books with more "meat". This story just didn't have enough for me (when compared with her others). There was more about Vivienne's past than there was actual storyline, but don't get me wrong. It was certainly entertaining to see her past come to life so vividly. So my feelings about this book...? I will recommend it to Taylor's "vampire legacy" fans. As for others? Check it out at your local library when it becomes available.

Vivienne Courbet was born in Paris, but ultimately ran away from her home. In 1719, she went to a brothel, The where the news of her beauty, youth and innocence eventually reached the attention of her employers Victor and Mona. The duo was as impressed as her customers and converted the vibrant Vivienne into one of them, a vampire.

She easily changed to her new lifestyle and became the toast of Paris, but left her birth city during the height of the Terror of the French Revolution. She lived quite comfortably into the twenty-first century when she became head of the powerful vampire council the Cadre at a critical time when the Others attack her species. Vivienne knows she and her kind must identity and either neutralize or destroy their enemy before she and others like her permanently die.

For all those horror and supernatural readers who have followed the Vampire Legacy, the current tale THE VAMPIRE VIVIENNE provides many of the answers left open from the previous books. The tale also features the return of popular characters to add to the feel of completeness. Yet Karen E Taylor also refreshes her story line with a brilliant twist that entertains and hypnotizes sub-genre fans.

Harriet Klausner

Karen Taylor's vampires are a pretty tame lot, all in all. They need blood but generally take only a pint or so. They seem to rarely kill their victims and aside from having to avoid daylight and not aging, lead pretty normal lives. This is not a bad book. It's well-written and the lead character, Vivienne Courbet, is beautiful, spunky and impulsive (almost, but not quite, to the point of being stupid). The plot is thin. We follow Vivienne from her work (which she apparently loves) as a high priced prostitute in 18th Century Paris, to her conversion by Max, through the French Revolution, to modern day New York. Not a lot of surprises in this one. The villain is pretty obvious, the resolution pat. Moderately entertaining fluff, but I've read worse.