Pandora

Rating:
Summary: Not up to snuff!
Review: Quite disappointing - quite unlike her previous gorgeous evocations of New Orleans and vampiric personae. I have always found Rice's writing to be lush and lyrical albeit somewhat uneven, but this book felt somewhat paltry in flavor and texture. Much more time should have been spent on the vampiric existence of Pandora. Am I imagining this, or did she crank this out in record time? Hope she is a little more generous with Armand...

Rating:
Summary: Hmmmm....
Review: This book was interesting but not what I expected. It was more of that historical stuff when what I really wanted was more adventure like Queen of the Damned. I was very able to put the book down which was what disappointed me. Not to mention that I thought she could have chosen a more known and interesting vampire such as the old sisters who are in seclusion, Marius, or Armand. The one thing the book did do is keep me hanging so that I will pick up the next one. Continuing the witching hour series would be great too. The last book in that series kind of left us hanging when the two "children" ran off together. I am still refusing to give up on Mrs. Rice, but so far her latest books have just made say Hmmmm....

Rating:
Summary: A good warm up for future books, but it left me hanging.
Review: I found the first few chapters to be quite lively and entertaining. I couldn't wait to hear about Pandora's initiation (into vampiredom), but as chapter after chapter wore on and on about her pre-vampire life I was bored into a state of hopeful finality. It seemed to me that the author was more caught up in her superflous dialogue and the life and times of the roman empire and artisan culture, rather than, telling us about vampires. In my opinion Pandora's family was over developed and these characteres became overly familure by the fourth chapter. I wanted to hear about the lives of vampires, to hear about their powers, their stealthfulness. In this book we're only teased, but I will give Rice the credit of discribing in great detail the making of a vampire and their original beginings. This book is great for those who are very familiar with these characters and for those who like romantic/early euro history novels. If Rice would have taken out all the middle chapters and their fluffy wordsy romance, "cut and pasted" the last three chapters in their place and finished the book with the intention of developing the lives of these creatures it might have been more interesting.

Rating:
Summary: sketchy and dull
Review: Anne Rice's latest effort is a shadow of her previous vampire volumes. Not much story, dull lectures on minutiae, laughable dialogue. I miss the richly textured histories that her books used to be. Now it seems like she's just cranking them out under a deadline. I miss the old Anne Rice.

Rating:
Summary: Not her best, but close enough to keep me reading.
Review: If you liked "Queen of the Damned" you will like this one. Anne Rice's last two books of the chronicles kind of lost me, but "Pandora" is a must read if you enjoyed "Interview","Lestat",& "Queen".

Rating:
Summary: Thank God, finally
Review: Yes, finally a great book after three disappointments. Not that the others were all bad, well I still haven't finished Violin, but I read Pandora in about two days. I think it is right up there with Interview and Lestat, possibly better than the latter. I am so happy and can not wait for Armand.

Rating:
Summary: great book but to short
Review: Pandoras story should have been about the 2,0000 yrs. after becoming a Vampire. The only flaw is to much of the book is devoted to her childhood and not enough to her experiences as a Vampire. Anne Rice is still the best storyteller around.

Rating:
Summary: Don't count Anne Rice back in the game just yet.....
Review: Contrary to what appears to be popular opinion by many others who have added their comments here on Amazon, this latest installation in the Vampire Chronicles is not the harbinger of Anne Rice's return as a great writer. Indeed, not. She's still floundering.

As one other person mentioned already, I can't understand why Rice chose to focus so heavily on Pandora's human existence when this woman lived as a vampire for a couple of millenia. Not that Pandora's human history wasn't entertaining (even though, at times, I felt like I was being lectured to about ancient civilizations (why did I need to know that "garum" is Roman ketchup???)), but what happened in between her rebirth as a vampire and the Pandora we met in Queen of the Damned? How did she get hooked up with the Asian vampire who ended up combusting in the Himalayas? Are we to assume that Pandora simply decided to take up needlepoint after a while and just didn't have much to tell about her vampiric years? Reads like a half-written book to me. Actually, all of Rice's books are starting to read that way, so I don't know that I'm really surprised.

And, of course, Rice has once again fallen back on her old standby of making every notable character in the story unbelievably beautiful, even before they got their vampire makeovers. Heavens forbid that any of Rice's hero(ine)s should suffer a pimple or (gasp!) split ends.

The only truly interesting items I pulled from this story had to do with two vampires other than Pandora and Marius - those being Lestat and Armand. According to Pandora, Lestat is lying in a catatonic state somewhere in New Orleans (to which I'm sure many who have visited N.O. can relate...). And, she also mentions that "one who was believed gone from us is now apparently known to have survived." Sounds like Armand didn't manage to put himself entirely out of commission when he decided to sunbathe on the steps of St. Patrick's Cathedral.

Here's hoping that Rice manages to lose the pedantic tone and finds some more gripping inspiration by the time she finishes the last rewrite of Armand.

Rating:
Summary: Nice background for pre-Lestat vampires,
Review: The book does tie up the previous stories of Marius and the history of the father and mother of the vampires. Pandora character does comes through the story, however I agree with some the previous reviewers that Anne Rice just tease with the story and I found the ending alittle to simple.

Rating:
Summary: Although she has returned home, Rice is still lacking!
Review: I was so excited to find another Anne Rice vampire novel on the bookstore shelf. I read most of it in one day and as I journeyed along with Pandora, my initial excitment waned. I will finish the book in the hopes that it is a prelude to something better (i.e., "Armand"), but "Pandora" leaves much Anne Rice to be desired. I enjoy the links to previous vampire novels and the explanations of missing bits of vampire history, but I agree with others who have reviewed this tale. Why did the author spend so much time detailing the pre-vampire life of Pandora and leave out almost of her life after reuniting with Marius in Antioch? After all, isn't the tale about vampires, not living humans? "Pandora" is Anne Rice, so it must be read by her fans, but it is not Anne Rice at her vintage best.