Book Review: VITTORIO THE VAMPIRE by Anne Rice

In this last novel of the “New Tales of the Vampires” series we are introduced to a new vampire Vittorio. Vittorio was a young boy on the verge of manhood during the 15^th century Italy. His family ruled on high from their mountain top castle in northern Tuscany. His ideal life was shattered in one tragic night of murder. The family castle was invaded in the dead of night by what Vittorio would later find out is the ghastly Order of the Ruby Grail.  Every single man woman and child was murdered except Vittorio. He was the only one spared by the super natural killers. Vittorio fought valiantly to protect his little brother and sister but could not stop these freakishly strong killers from their mission of death.  Spared by the woman who had helped destroy his family Vittorio became obsessed with vengeance and finding out more about this supernatural woman Ursula and the Order of the Ruby Grail.

4/5 I enjoyed a brand new vampire and a new romantic one too! I wish Anne had written more of this branch of the Vampire Chronicles because I would read those too. This one was a short, fast paced read and I enjoyed it. I would recommend this one to historical lovers alike because it does not really tie into any of the other novels in the series, it defiantly can be read as a stand-alone novel.

• FTC ~ this novel is from my personal collection.
• R-Rating for sexual reference and violence.
• Amazon: VITTORIO THE VAMPIRE by Anne Rice

~Lizzie~

Book Review: PANDORA by Anne Rice

The ancient vampire Pandora has lived for millenniums and finally tells her tale. Roman by birth during the height of the great Roman reign, Pandora was an anomaly in the world of men. She was educated, articulate, strong and not to mention beautiful. You can say she is defiantly the love of Marius’ life from the moment they met. They had first met as mortals and Marius had begged Pandora’s father to be allowed to marry her. Her father told Marius “you are destined to be a roaming historian” and he was deemed unfit for marriage. Marius and Pandora aka Lydia back then went their own paths but had never forgotten each other.

In a horrific turn of events Pandora is forced to flee Rome in fear for her life. Alone she is secreted away to Antioch to start a new life. With no family or friends to comfort her Pandora grieved terribly for her loss and ended up turning to the only comfort she could think of, the temple of Isis. Finding new friends with her goddess Isis she felt compelled to share her tragedy and the freakish dreams that had been plaguing her ever since she left Rome. The dreams were disturbing to the temple and they did not know what to make of them but they knew someone who might be the only person that could help her to understand them. The “mysterious mind reader” as they called him turned out to be none other than Pandora’s lost Marius. This was just the beginning of Marius and Pandora’s love that endured for millenniums. This time around there was no way Pandora would give Marius up and not with out a fight.

3/5 Not my favorite, it was really short and basically only gave the beginning of Pandora’s tale. I would not recommend this novel unless you have read “Blood and Gold” because the two novels really tie in together. And if you want the whole story you have to read them both.

R~ Rating for sexual references

FTC ~ this novel is part of my personal collection.

Amazon: Pandora by Anne Rice

~Lizzie~

Mailbox Monday: Leslie Carroll & Anne Rice

Releasing 9.2.2014 Inglorious Royal Marriages by Leslie Carroll
"It’s no secret that the marriages of monarchs are often made in hell. Here are some of the most spectacular mismatches in five hundred years of royal history....

In a world where many kings, queens, and princes lacked nothing but true love, marital mismatches could bring out the baddest, boldest behavior in the bluest of bloodlines. Margaret Tudor, her niece Mary I, and Catherine of Braganza were desperately in love with chronically unfaithful husbands, but at least they weren’t murdered by them, as were two of the Medici princesses were. King Charles II’s beautiful, high-spirited sister “Minette” wed Louis XIV’s younger brother, who wore more makeup and perfume than she did. Forced to wed her boring, jug-eared cousin Ferdinand, Marie of Roumania—a granddaughter of Queen Victoria—proved herself one of the heroines of World War I by using her prodigious personal charm to regain massive amounts of land during the peace talks at Versailles.

Brimming with outrageous real-life stories of royal marriages gone wrong, this is an entertaining, unforgettable book of dubious matches doomed from the start".

Pandora by Anne Rice
"Anne Rice, creator of the Vampire Lestat, the Mayfair witches and the amazing worlds they inhabit, now gives us the first in a new series of novels linked together by the fledgling vampire David Talbot, who has set out to become a chronicler of his fellow Undead. The novel opens in present-day Paris in a crowded cafe, where David meets Pandora. She is two thousand years old, a Child of the Millennia, the first vampire ever made by the great Marius. David persuades her to tell the story of her life.

Pandora begins, reluctantly at first and then with increasing passion, to recount her mesmerizing tale, which takes us through the ages, from Imperial Rome to eighteenth-century France to twentieth-century Paris and New Orleans. She carries us back to her mortal girlhood in the world of Caesar Augustus, a world chronicled by Ovid and Petronius. This is where Pandora meets and falls in love with the handsome, charismatic, lighthearted, still-mortal Marius. This is the Rome she is forced to flee in fear of assassination by conspirators plotting to take over the city. And we follow her to the exotic port of Antioch, where she is destined to be reunited with Marius, now immortal and haunted by his vampire nature, who will bestow on her the Dark Gift as they set out on the fraught and fantastic adventure of their two turbulent centuries together".
~Lizzie~

Mailbox Monday: Anne Rice

Vittorio the Vampire by Anne Rice
"With Pandora, Anne Rice began a magnificent new series of vampire novels. Now, in the second of her New Tales of the Vampires, she tells the mesmerizing story of Vittorio, a vampire in the Italian Age of Gold.
Educated in the Florence of Cosimo de' Medici, trained in knighthood at his father's mountaintop castle, Vittorio inhabits a world of courtly splendor and country pleasures - a world suddenly threatened when his entire family is confronted by an unholy power.

In the midst of this upheaval, Vittorio is seduced by the vampire Ursula, the most beautiful of his supernatural enemies. As he sets out in pursuit of vengeance, entering the nightmarish Court of the Ruby Grail, increasingly more enchanted (and confused) by his love for the mysterious Ursula, he finds himself facing demonic adversaries, war and political intrigue.

Against a backdrop of the wonders - both sacred and profane - and the beauty and ferocity of Renaissance Italy, Anne Rice creates a passionate and tragic legend of doomed young love and lost innocence'.~Lizzie~