Vampire Chronicles 10: Blood Canticle
SUMMARY: Anne Rice continues her astonishing Vampire Chronicles in a new novel that begins whereBlackwood Farmleft off and tells the story of Lestat's quest for redemption, goodness, and the love of Rowan Mayfair. Welcome back to Blackwood Farm. Here are all of the brilliantly conceived characters that make up the two worlds of vampires and witches: Mona Mayfair, who's come to the farm to die and is brought into the realm of the undead; her uncle, Julian Mayfair, guardian of the family, determined to forever torment Lestat for what he has done to Mona; Rowan Mayfair, brilliant neurosurgeon and witch, who finds herself dangerously drawn to the all-powerful Lestat; her husband, Michael Curry, hero of the Mayfair Chronicles, who seeks Lestat's help with the temporary madness of his wife; Ash Templeton, a 5,000-year-old Taltos who has taken Mona's child; and Patsy, the country-western singer, who returns to avenge her death at the hands of her son, Quinn Blackwood. Delightfully, at the book's centre is the Vampire Lestat, once the epitome of evil, now pursuing the transformation set in motion withMemnoch the Devil. He struggles with his vampirism and yearns for goodness, purity and love, as he saves Patsy's ghost from the dark realm of the Earthbound, uncovers the mystery of the Taltos and unselfishly decides the fate of his beloved Rowan Mayfair. A story of love and loyalty, of the search for passion and promise,Blood Canticleis Anne Rice at her finest.
Vampire Chronicles 8: Blood and Gold
SUMMARY: In the best Anne Rice tradition, the great Vampire Marius returns to tell us the mesmerizing story of his life through the ages, from the time of Caesar Augustus to the present. The Vampire Marius, child of the Millenea, has lived two thousand years. He tells his story to Thorne, a lone vampire who was a Viking in a mortal life tells of his birth into the Senatorial Class at the time of Caesar Augustus, and how he was transformed into a "dark god" by Druids in the forests of Gaul; how he created the Vampire Armand and became guardian of Akasha and Enkil, the Queen and the King of Vampires, who hold within themselves the secret core of the life of the undead "destroy them and you destroy all vampires." He relates how he became the voice of reason among the vampires, and how he created Pandora, the vampire he still grieves for... We see Marius as a mortal boy in the teeming streets of second-century Rome, and in young manhood in the time of Constantine and his battle to save Rome from the Visigoths. We follow him through the Dark Ages and the Black Death, and through another thousand years to Venice and to Florence, where he seeks out the great Botticelli and becomes a painter, working in a glorious palazzo a blood drinker in the thick of a rich and brilliant mortal life. Worlds within worlds unfold historic, fantastic, cultural, vampiric, from the London of Henry VIII to 17th-century Paris and Weimar as the novel moves to its splendid finale in an Aegean kingdom ruled by the great vampire: the magician Marius.