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Summary: Blood and Gold audio cassett
Review: I listened to this book as I drove from Arizona to Ohio. I could not wait to get into the car each day! (it took me 4 days to drive the distance, with my two cats in the car!) I had seen the movie "Interview With the Vampire" with Tom Cruz years ago but that was my only experience with Anne Rice's work. I was totally enthralled with this book. I was not familiar with any of the characters but I did not feel lost in this tale. I truly wish the drive was longer and the story too. I recommend it to any newcomers to Ms Rice's work. I loved the history and background. I want to know more now that I have met Mauris. I can't wait to hear Pandora's side of the story.
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Summary: Whew!
Review: After hearing about the HORRIBLE job made on Queen of the Damned (though I blame whoever made the adaptation and not necessarily the acting... although....) I wanted to find Anne Rice and give her a good slap in the face. This book has redeemed the two heartbreakingly bad pieces of Anne Rice's Vampire Chronicals (Vittorio and Merrick) and even was a step up from The Vampire Armand, which I did enjoy. The history was excellent and I did like how she incorporated the relationship between himself and Mael. However I did not see the point of killing Santino via Thorne and what was Thorne about anyway, really?
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Summary: Flame on!
Review: I've got to get this out of my system. I've read quite of few of the Vampire Chronicles ever since "Interview...". I like all of them, including this one. But if I have to read another story of male vampires gushing over each other like teenagers on their first prom I'm gonna puke. At least in this one Marius switch-hits and gets to also gush over a couple of females. It's too bad the author set the rules that vampires can't get it on. So it seems all they can do is gush. And frankly, it gets tiresome even with male to female after awhile, what with all talk and no action. With male to male gushing I will admit it really sets off a homophobic streak in me, but maybe that's how people act in the artsy community that Ms. Rice no doubt hangs with. There. Now I feel better. I liked this story from both a historical perspective, as well as a fleshing out of the main story. Marius, for those that follow, is the Rodney Dangerfield of vampires. It is his job to guard Akasha and Enkil, the original vampires, for 2,000 years. We know from previous novels that Marius does not get one word from the happy couple, but as soon as young whippersnapper Lestat comes along, Akasha gets the gushing going, and Marius is left with no respect. This story lets us know more about what happened during those 2,000 years. I liked the technique of bringing up events we already know with adding more details. It also gives a good idea of what things were like during these times, at least in the eyes of Ann Rice. We get a lot of glimpses of early Christianity. We learn how the religion really didn't take off for a couple hundred years after Christ, and then it took a Roman emperor to bring it to the big time. From my other readings, this is absolutely true. She also continues this throughout the double millenia, and it held my interest throughout. I hope she continues the Vampire Chronicles. Just turn off the faucet a little on the gush.
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Summary: best one yet
Review: i loved this book so much. until i read blood and gold I could not figure out which one of her vampire chronicals i liked best. Blood and Gold most of the other stories retold with more detail and emotion. it was so good. the story was very emotional and i could not help but cry at some parts. I hope Ms. Rice will write a new novel to follow on to this one. I recomend it to everyone that was read and enjoyed any of her other novels
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Summary: Great Vampire / Historical novel
Review: Blood and Gold (Vampire Chronicles) is a very good book, especially for the History student, or those persons interested in the lore of History. It tells you all about "Marius" of Rome from the day of his "turning" and his adventures throughout the History of Western civilization. When I read it, I could vividly imagine being in Rome during all her glory and also passing through the sad chapter of its invasion and sacking by the Barbarian hordes. Rice does a great job transporting the reader through major passages of History through the eyes and mind of a vampire. Highly recommended !
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Summary: By far the best of the later works
Review: It seems to me that Ms. Rice has now captured all points of view in her telling of the Akasha story. This was by far the best.
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Summary: Not one of Rice's better efforts
Review: I have to agree with other reviewers who have panned this book for being a rehash of previous "Vampire Chronicle" books, such as "Vampire Armand" and "Queen of the Damned." (I confess I have not read "Pandora," the one "VC" novel I have missed, but given the way Marius's time with her was glossed over, I suspect that "Blood and Gold" is a rehash of "Pandora," too, as other reviewers have suggested.) And what is the deal with this new Thorne character? Clearly, he was brought in so that Marius could have someone to tell his life story to, but it was never fully explained why he was so angry at Maharet. And why did he feel it necessary to take revenge on Santino on Marius's behalf? The whole Thorne plotline made no sense whatsoever, and was far more frustrating than the Marius story, which for all its repetition, at least kept my attention for being told from a different viewpoint.
At least Anne Rice's storytelling is up to her usual lush standards, the Thorne plotline notwithstanding. We get her beautiful descriptions of the ancient and Renaissance times, as well as that of the 1700s. We learn more about Bianca and her relationship to Marius, as well as what it meant for him to guard the secret of Those Who Must Be Kept for so long. So it is not a total waste of time. But don't buy the hardcover version -- save a few dollars and buy the paperback.
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Summary: She took a step I didn't imagine
Review: Since nothing is more annyoing than tediousness, I'm only going to say one thing that others have said: Anne Rice, you are the true Queen of the Vampiric World, and it will be a millenium before anyone takes your throne. On to something more original, Rice did something in this novel I thought she'd never do. In the first novels we only hear mention of historical figures like Marrie Antoinette, from the point of view of other vampires. As we get newer and more involved books the vampires may or may not have much more involvement as a result of family bloodlines, (IE Vittorio's father served Cosimo De Medici, and Pandora's father was a close friend of Augustan) but Marius breaks a barrier that no other chronicle has yet to attempt...he speaks with the great Botticelli! Not only do he and Botticelli form a powerful friendship, but on one occasion Marius considers giving him the Dark Blood. This step not only shocked me but it amazed me as well. If I hadn't known Botticelli was an actual artist I would have assumed him another well crafted character, and for the life of me I loved him as much as I loved all of her other ones. I believed in his personality and the way he and Marius got along so well. Perhaps it was a bold step on her part in order to attain some originality, as I myself was worried about how similiar it would be to the other stories. Nevertheless I both praise and admire this new and exiting leap and know that it is only a step that Rice herself could make.
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Summary: Anne Rice may be relating too closely...
Review: Although I love Anne Rice and her Vampire Chronicals, this one left me a bit cold. I felt it was tedious and not up to her normal creative best. I enjoyed this book, but I can't entirely recommend it hands down. She has done better.
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Summary: One of Rice's best yet!
Review: I am a huge Marius fan, and I awaited this book for the longest time. I was not disappointed! Rice begins the tale slowly, a sometimes frustrating habit she tends to have with most of her books, but the writing soon picks up the pace as we go back in time over 2,000 years to the time of Marius de Romanus, a Roman scholar taken, by force, during the prime of his mortal life into the beginning of his immortal life. Marius, intent on finding the answers to his questions about his new lifestyle, heads from the barbarian lands to Egypt, where the horrible answers to his questions fall into his hands in the form of the statuesque Akasha and Enkil, the parents of all vampires. Thus Marius becomes their unwitting keeper. We follow Marius in his travels throughout the ancient world, and his rocky romance with his first and most prominent love throughout the entire tale, Pandora, a girl from his mortal days whom he is forced to bring into his world of vampirism. Rice, sadly, spends very little time on their 200-year life together in ancient Antioch, most likely because that was nearly the entire plotline of her earlier book "Pandora." After leaving Pandora, Marius travels once more about the ancient world, tortured with nightmares of his lost love, and ends up falling into a deep slumber, awakening again in Renaissance Italy where he meets his second love, a noblewoman by the name of Bianca, and creates his next child Amadeo (Armand). Perhaps the largest portion of the book is spent on Marius's life in Renaissance Italy, yet after a near brush with death and Amadeo's kidnapping by Christian cultist vampires, Marius and Bianca are forced to flee. The couple wander aimlessly about Europe, though Marius has a secret mission to find his first love Pandora who is rumored to be in Dresden. Though when he finally finds her, their reunion doesn't turn out the way he had hoped. Marius is perhaps one of the saddest vampires of Rice's creation, because the most disasterous and heartbreaking things continually happen to him, but he is extremely resiliant, and things work out for him at the end of the book, which has surprise twist even I did not see coming, with the return of the red-haired twins from "Queen of the Damned."
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