Vittorio, the Vampire

Rating:
Summary: Good entertaining read.
Review:
We've been reading and enjoying Ann Rice's vampire novels for a few years now. "Vittorio the Vampire" is one of the more recently written ones. In "Vittorio," Rice departs from the usual list of characters, Armand, Pandora, Lestat, etc., to introduce another and only slightly related branch of the vampire family. Vittorio was the son of a rich noble family from the mountains of northern Italy in the 16th century. His family associates itself with the Medici of Florence, Italy, and tries to stay out of wars and politics. Vittorio grows up learning both cultural knowledge of literature, mathematics, and art in addition to manly arts of knighthood. Unknown to Vittorio while growing up in the peaceful mountain valley castle of his family is the existence of a vampire cult called "The Court of the Ruby Grail." These vampires had, apparently for hundreds of years, demanded and received children, criminals, and other sacrificial victims from surrounding villages and nobles. When Vittorio's father refuses their renewed demand for sacrificial children, the vampire cult kills his whole family. Vittorio, who is only 16 years old, survives when he meets a young "girl" vampire and it's love at first sight. In the subsequent chapters Vittorio gets captured and taken to the castle of the Ruby (blood) Grail vampires and learns of their horrors. We are entertained by their blood red mass at midnight before a statue of Satan with sacrificial victims lined up at the communion rail to be bled dead. We never are told where these vampires originated, but loyal Rice readers might presume that they may have come originally out of the Satanic vampires who have plagued Marius for many centuries. Ursula convinces the elders to spare Vittorio once more and he is taken to Florence and dumped on a street. He is taken in by monks associated with the Medici, for indeed as his father's heir he has a small fortune in the Medici banks. From there he meets guardian angels, and they call a major angel. They help him go back to destroy the Ruby Cult by daylight, but he can't destroy Ursula, his true love. At nightfall she awakes and tricks him into becoming a vampire himself. True love has triumphed over vampires and angles, and the two of them live together happily ever after.

This book raises the philosophical question of whether or not it is acceptable to sacrifice the infirm and helpless of a society for the others to be wealthy and prosperous. Both in Vittorio's family lands, and in the town of Santa Maddalana, the people had sacrificed their children and their week in order to prosper. They had no crime, no infirm, no sick, no plague, none of the suffering that usually plagues human society. But is prosperity and peace worth the horrible price? The question has troubled philosophers and politicians for a long time.

[Note: The Ruby Grail cult apparently numbered about 46 vampires. In Rice's vampire novels, every vampire needs about 1 victim's blood per day. That comes to about 16790 victims per year, or significant city in the 16th century. It comes to about 840,000 deaths in a 50 year human lifetime, more than even the largest cities. That seems to me to be a non-sustainable depletion of human population.]



Rating:
Summary: It Bites. Literally.
Review: Dear Authors: if you have a number of interesting but not necessarily related ideas, take the time to flesh each one out individually in a well-plotted and well-written book. If you decide to cram them all into one short work you'll end up wih a pointless little casserole like Vittorio, the Vampire. The book starts well enough but then disintegrates; while the places are, for the most part, beautifully described, the characters are poorly drawn, the plot meanders aimlessly from pillar to post until it disappears altogether, and the various jumbled themes can't be addressed satisfactorily in a book this brief and hastily assembled. No wonder it was only $3.98.

Rating:
Summary: A new Vampire tale, sort of.
Review: "Vittorio the Vampire" is about Vittorio, a 15th Centrey Italian knight who loves art and his family (a rare turn for an Anne Rice vampire). One night his family is given an ultematum; give vampires a tribute or the village dies. The tribute is refused, and Vittorio's family is murdered in front of him; but he spared by the beautiful vampire named Ursula. He escapes and goes after the vampires for revenge with the help of some gaurdian angels. This is Anne Rice's attempt to seperate herself from Lestat; and it dose seems more like a sequal to "Memnoch the Devil" than anything else. It has a lot to do with angel and devil worship, to a degree. There is a lot to this book that is pretty good. I liked the Ruby Grail court, it has a kind of Charles Manson like cult spooky feel to it. There are some big problems with "Vittorio the Vampire"; it is too close to "Interveiw with the Vampire", with Claudia/Ursula comparison, and the Ruby Grail court reminds me a lot of "Theater of the Vampires" that Armand run in Paris. Also it seemed like a history lesson of the beginning of the Renaissance in Italy. But all in all it is short enough to really injoy before it gets tedious.