Pandora - Hardcover
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 café, 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.
From the Hardcover edition.
The novel opens in present-day Paris in a crowded café, 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.
From the Hardcover edition.
"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.
Review:
Anne Rice wasn't the first writer to show vampires as sexy--there are powerfully perverse sexual undercurrents in Bram Stoker's Dracula, granddaddy of all modern vampire novels. But Rice's 1976 Interview With the Vampire made vampirism lusher and more explicitly attractive. Though there's still a dark and messy side (as with sex), non-vampires are irresistibly tempted by perks like immortality and great good looks. Pandora, one of many follow-ups, is the partial autobiography of a heroine born human in Augustan Rome and still undead today. Much of it reads like historical romance, but involvement with the cult of Isis makes Pandora dream about blood-drinking ... Characteristically for Rice, the romantic climax--foreshadowed from paragraph one--means finding not true love but true vampirism with Mr Right. Indeed the horror aspect has almost vanished and draining people of their blood is considered acceptable since Pandora and friends kill only bad guys. (Compare the morality of Terry Pratchett's on-the-wagon vampires, who make do with animal blood from kosher butchers.) Sensuality alternates with dollops of historical research and references to previous novels such as The Vampire Lestat-- referred to by title--whose events readers are expected to remember. Pandora is written for, and will satisfy, Rice's many established addicts. --David Langford
Review:
"This is Rice in top romantic form."
--Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"SEDUCTIVE . . . [RICE] HAS RETURNED TO THE SOURCE OF HER BEST WORK, her sexy and invincible vampires. . . . Pandora is a superheroine: beautiful, of course, but also smart, fearless, independent, lusty, resourceful, and so pumped up at the end of her breathless narrative, she takes off for New Orleans, hot on the trail of Lestat and Marius."
--Booklist
"EERILY VIBRANT . . . The title character is a highborn woman of Augustan Rome who later names herself after the Pandora of mythology, opening her own box of surprises. Sitting in a modern-day Paris cafe in the aftermath of a fresh kill, the vampire Pandora accepts the challenge of recounting her history and immediately sets to work, filling the blank pages of an elegant leatherbound notebook. . . . A wealth of narrative twists and period detail."
--The New York Times Book Review
"RICE'S MOST BEAUTIFULLY WRITTEN WORK . . . A BOOK THAT CELEBRATES THE WONDER OF THE WORLD ON EVERY PAGE."
--Raleigh News & Observer
"TANTALIZING."
--Library Journal"
-This is Rice in top romantic form.-
--Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
-SEDUCTIVE . . . [RICE] HAS RETURNED TO THE SOURCE OF HER BEST WORK, her sexy and invincible vampires. . . . Pandora is a superheroine: beautiful, of course, but also smart, fearless, independent, lusty, resourceful, and so pumped up at the end of her breathless narrative, she takes off for New Orleans, hot on the trail of Lestat and Marius.-
--Booklist
-EERILY VIBRANT . . . The title character is a highborn woman of Augustan Rome who later names herself after the Pandora of mythology, opening her own box of surprises. Sitting in a modern-day Paris cafe in the aftermath of a fresh kill, the vampire Pandora accepts the challenge of recounting her history and immediately sets to work, filling the blank pages of an elegant leatherbound notebook. . . . A wealth of narrative twists and period detail.-
--The New York Times Book Review
-RICE'S MOST BEAUTIFULLY WRITTEN WORK . . . A BOOK THAT CELEBRATES THE WONDER OF THE WORLD ON EVERY PAGE.-
--Raleigh News & Observer
-TANTALIZING.-
--Library Journal
"This is Rice in top romantic form."
--Kirkus Reviews (starred review) "SEDUCTIVE . . . [RICE] HAS RETURNED TO THE SOURCE OF HER BEST WORK, her sexy and invincible vampires. . . . Pandora is a superheroine: beautiful, of course, but also smart, fearless, independent, lusty, resourceful, and so pumped up at the end of her breathless narrative, she takes off for New Orleans, hot on the trail of Lestat and Marius."
--Booklist "EERILY VIBRANT . . . The title character is a highborn woman of Augustan Rome who later names herself after the Pandora of mythology, opening her own box of surprises. Sitting in a modern-day Paris cafe in the aftermath of a fresh kill, the vampire Pandora accepts the challenge of recounting her history and immediately sets to work, filling the blank pages of an elegant leatherbound notebook. . . . A wealth of narrative twists and period detail."
--The New York Times Book Review "RICE'S MOST BEAUTIFULLY WRITTEN WORK . . . A BOOK THAT CELEBRATES THE WONDER OF THE WORLD ON EVERY PAGE."
--Raleigh News & Observer "TANTALIZING."
--Library Journal
--Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"SEDUCTIVE . . . [RICE] HAS RETURNED TO THE SOURCE OF HER BEST WORK, her sexy and invincible vampires. . . . Pandora is a superheroine: beautiful, of course, but also smart, fearless, independent, lusty, resourceful, and so pumped up at the end of her breathless narrative, she takes off for New Orleans, hot on the trail of Lestat and Marius."
--Booklist
"EERILY VIBRANT . . . The title character is a highborn woman of Augustan Rome who later names herself after the Pandora of mythology, opening her own box of surprises. Sitting in a modern-day Paris cafe in the aftermath of a fresh kill, the vampire Pandora accepts the challenge of recounting her history and immediately sets to work, filling the blank pages of an elegant leatherbound notebook. . . . A wealth of narrative twists and period detail."
--The New York Times Book Review
"RICE'S MOST BEAUTIFULLY WRITTEN WORK . . . A BOOK THAT CELEBRATES THE WONDER OF THE WORLD ON EVERY PAGE."
--Raleigh News & Observer
"TANTALIZING."
--Library Journal"
-This is Rice in top romantic form.-
--Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
-SEDUCTIVE . . . [RICE] HAS RETURNED TO THE SOURCE OF HER BEST WORK, her sexy and invincible vampires. . . . Pandora is a superheroine: beautiful, of course, but also smart, fearless, independent, lusty, resourceful, and so pumped up at the end of her breathless narrative, she takes off for New Orleans, hot on the trail of Lestat and Marius.-
--Booklist
-EERILY VIBRANT . . . The title character is a highborn woman of Augustan Rome who later names herself after the Pandora of mythology, opening her own box of surprises. Sitting in a modern-day Paris cafe in the aftermath of a fresh kill, the vampire Pandora accepts the challenge of recounting her history and immediately sets to work, filling the blank pages of an elegant leatherbound notebook. . . . A wealth of narrative twists and period detail.-
--The New York Times Book Review
-RICE'S MOST BEAUTIFULLY WRITTEN WORK . . . A BOOK THAT CELEBRATES THE WONDER OF THE WORLD ON EVERY PAGE.-
--Raleigh News & Observer
-TANTALIZING.-
--Library Journal
"This is Rice in top romantic form."
--Kirkus Reviews (starred review) "SEDUCTIVE . . . [RICE] HAS RETURNED TO THE SOURCE OF HER BEST WORK, her sexy and invincible vampires. . . . Pandora is a superheroine: beautiful, of course, but also smart, fearless, independent, lusty, resourceful, and so pumped up at the end of her breathless narrative, she takes off for New Orleans, hot on the trail of Lestat and Marius."
--Booklist "EERILY VIBRANT . . . The title character is a highborn woman of Augustan Rome who later names herself after the Pandora of mythology, opening her own box of surprises. Sitting in a modern-day Paris cafe in the aftermath of a fresh kill, the vampire Pandora accepts the challenge of recounting her history and immediately sets to work, filling the blank pages of an elegant leatherbound notebook. . . . A wealth of narrative twists and period detail."
--The New York Times Book Review "RICE'S MOST BEAUTIFULLY WRITTEN WORK . . . A BOOK THAT CELEBRATES THE WONDER OF THE WORLD ON EVERY PAGE."
--Raleigh News & Observer "TANTALIZING."
--Library Journal
"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.
- PublisherB E Trice Pub
- Publication date1999
- ISBN 10 1890885029
- ISBN 13 9781890885021
- BindingHardcover
- Rating
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