Blood and Gold

A few years ago I got back into reading Anne Rice after having stopped with THE MUMMY a couple of decades ago. Working my way through THE VAMPIRE CHRONICLES and THE MAYFAIR WITCHES, I have finally arrived at BLOOD AND GOLD, which was written in 2000. Rice’s most enduring and popular character will always be Lestat, the young 18th Century French nobleman turned blood drinker whom she introduced in INTERVIEW WITH THE VAMPIRE. But after giving her readers a half dozen books with their favorite at the center of the action, she began expanding her literary vampire universe by putting out books telling the stories of secondary characters such as Armand, Vittorio, and Pandora. In BLOOD AND GOLD, Rice tells the story of Marius, the Roman show more aristocrat turned creature of the night, and keeper of Those Who Must Be Kept.

Or, retelling the story, as much of Marius’s saga, from his origin as a vampire in Druid worshiping ancient Britain, his becoming the keeper of Akasha and Enkil, the original vampires, his time in Venice where he meets and becomes infatuated with the boy, Amadeo, to Akasha’s awakening in modern times have been covered in other books. BLOOD AND GOLD seeks to fill in the blank spots from other narratives, and tell things from Marius’ point of view. The book is framed by one of Rice’s tried and true tropes, where one character sits with another, and tells a tale. The story begins with the awakening of Thorne, a vampire Viking (that’s a book right there) who has slumbered under the ice for many centuries. Thorne has been awakened by the events of THE QUEEN OF THE DAMNED, and goes looking for Maheret, his maker, and one of the most ancient of vampires. Thorne meets Marius instead, who then proceeds for 500 pages to tell Thorne his story. At the end, Thorne does meet his maker, and some old conflicts are resolved. But this is Marius’ book, and his story encompasses ancient Rome and its fall to Barbarians, the newly rising Constantinople, Renaissance Venice, and the city of Dresden in Saxony in the 1600s. There are side trips to medieval Paris, and the England of Henry the VIII, where we get a look at the early Talesmasca. The great part of the book covers Marius’ relationships with Pandora, a young woman he falls in love with in Roman times and whom he makes into a vampire; Amadeo (later known as Armand), a beautiful boy he falls in love with in Venice, and makes into a vampire; and Bianca, a beautiful woman of Venice, whom Marius falls in love with and makes into a vampire when he is in desperate need of aide after running afoul of other blood drinkers. The fates of these relationships and why they come to such a state is the heart of the story. Along the way there are encounters with Mael, Avicus, Eudoxia, Zenobia, and Santino, other vampires who are friends, foes, and frenemies at different times. The great artist Botticelli makes an appearance, and there is a cameo by Daniel, the young man introduced in the first chapter of INTERVIEW WITH THE VAMPIRE, now a blood drinker himself, which in a small way ties everything back to the beginning.

Compared to some other books by Rice, I found BLOOD AND GOLD to be an easy read, the author seems to have forsaken her rampant use of adjectives that plagued other books, nor was there the tendency to gush over architecture and art in the extreme. Rice’s tremendous grasp of history is on full display, including a deep knowledge of fashion. Her books always create a world that feels much lived in; she always conveys a sense of place, and makes us believe that this is how people were at this point in time. The main character of Marius is well loved by some fans, not so much by others. In the early Lestat books, he is a knowing elder, with wisdom gained by centuries upon this earth. But the Marius we see in BLOOD AND GOLD is his own worst enemy by not taking threats seriously, practicing deceit with those who care for him, and foolishly overestimating himself. He comes across as being as guilty of letting his passions rule him as much as Lestat, a sin for which he often condemned the younger vampire. Then there are Marius’ relationships with young boys, and his expressed affection for them in the section set in Renaissance Venice. This comes uncomfortably close to pedophilia for some readers even though Rice makes it clear that her vampires do not have sexual relationships in the conventional way. I understand their concerns, and it is an issue with other books by her, especially in the Mayfair witches series, but what I think Rice is doing here is creating a character with a pre Christian and pagan sensability, one that he has not forsaken despite the passage of a thousand years. As I have stated in other reviews of Rice’s books, she is most definitely not everyone’s cup of tea, and those who have a problem most certainly have given up long before they would have gotten to BLOOD AND GOLD. If you are unfamiliar with Anne Rice, this book not a suitable entry point.

The finale of BLOOD AND GOLD, where some characters not seen since the end of THE QUEEN OF THE DAMNED appear, felt like THE VAMPIRE CHRONICLES were coming full circle, maybe an ending point. But Rice has continued to write in the years since, crossing over her witches and vampires, and adding werewolves to the mix. She had also written about Jesus Christ, a result of her returning (for a time) to the Catholic Church. And it looks as if we’re finally about to get that long delayed TV series adaptation of CHRONICLES, let’s hope AMC doesn’t botch it. show less

Thorne, his long sleep interrupted by the waking and rampaging of the Vampire Queen Akasha, is now driven to find the one who made him, the one he saw in his visions – Maharet, one of the two oldest vampires in the world

He emerges from his icy tomb to seek his own kind – and finds Marius, the Roman, Child of the Millennium, Former Keeper of Those Who Must be Kept. And avid biogorapher – who recounts his history to the Norse vampire

Thorne emerges from his centuries of sleep, trying to find answers, trying to find his creator, trying to find some explanation for what happened in the vampire world. At first it seems lucky that he runs into Marius, ancient roman vampire who knows all the answers, but as he’s taken to Marius’s home show more he realises the dreadful truth… he had fallen into the hands of The Biographer Vampires and their Endless Exposition.

Despite having known Marius for less than a few hours, this poor vampire is then subjected to Marius’s entire 2,000 year old life story (as an added bonus, he also tucks in the story of Eudoxia, a vampire he met along the way). I honestly think these books aren’t even trying to come up with a plausible explanation for why these vampires feel a need to info-dump their entire histories with the most purple of prose – just randomly dropping it on a stranger will do now. Thorne wanted to know about the events of Queen of the Damned, it would have taken exactly 10 minutes to sum up the (limited) plot of that book! No-one asked you your life story, Marius!

To be fair, though, this is one of the better interminably long, over-detailed biographies in the series because a) Marius is a relatively relevant character and b) we get a good sense of him in this book which we haven’t seen elsewhere (unlike, say, The Vampire Armand which was repetitive and added nothing new).

We get a good insight into Marius’s character as time and again he repeats the same patterns – Marius needs company. Not just vampire company (though for much of his existence he seems to need or crave a vampire companion), but human company as well especially when he was younger (relatively speaking), often throwing open his home for people to join him in parties and salons – far more so. In some ways he’s very much a product of his time and place: he’s a Roman. He’s very civilised, very social and, tellingly, pretty arrogant. Which is a wonderful repeated sense I get of Marius which is well done because I get this sense while seeing through Marius’s eyes AND without Marius himself conceding the point. But Marius is Roman, the civilised man in the world of barbarians who need to be educated. From a young age he was entrusted with the duty of keeping Akasha and Enkil safe and repeatedly drank Akasha’s blood making him much much stronger than pretty much every vampire he met. There’s a lot of fuel to that arrogance but once you see it, it puts everything else into a whole new context with Marius.

Like the vampires he always has with him – he says he likes to be a teacher, but ultimately with both vampires and humans he wants to be the AUTHORITY – teacher, mentor, patron, father-figure (and lover at same time because it’s the Vampire Chronicles) up to and including his latest companion. Everyone is subservient to him, every vampire has had to look up to him or been in a weaker position than him – and any vampire who argued with him gets a completely disproportionate response from him: Pandora, Mael, when Armand defied him (and a great deal of Marius’s distrust of Armand seems to stem as much from his unwillingness to follow exactly the path Marius laid down as anything else), any vampire he has been with. He even has a completely childish snit with and Mael because they won’t take on Zenobia – who Marius has no time or inclination for; never once considering that if he didn’t want to take on a student then maybe nor did they? In turn it raises a question about why Marius wants humans around him – is it a desire for civilised company? Or is it a need for an entourage to lord it over?

It also puts into context the semi-frequent disasters that blight Marius’s life – is it because he’s too close to humanity? Is it because his overarching obsession with Those Who Must be Kept distracts him? Or is because, as we see hinted at over and over, the arrogant Marius is too careless and too sure in his own abilities to take precautions?

Read More show less

I………

Three and a half stars for enjoying it, but I feel like Anne abandoned plot in favor of the novel-length character sketch after book four. It feels a lot like a pantsed novel—no shade, I myself am a Pantser. The plot feels weak to me and then peters out.

Also, I quite liked Marius in The Vampire Lestat and The Vampire Armand, but this guy is prone to melodramatic snitfits. I didn’t like him as much in this one; I feel like he never gets over being a Roman Patrician who wants everyone to obey him. Also, after several novels where I felt Marius was the adult supervision of the vampire world, I felt let down by his childish arguments with the women in his life. In previous novels I had him pegged as a dom, but this guy? No way show more he should engage in SSC/RACK. In short, he didn’t feel consistent with the guy we saw in previous novels.

But somehow I still enjoyed this book. show less

Blood and Gold by Anne Rice is part of her Vampire Chronicles series. The majority of the book is just recounting the events of the life of the vampire Marius. I found a lot of the book to be repetitive. Many of the events described were things that were told of in previous books in the series, though I suppose it was somewhat different being told from a different viewpoint. Still I found it somewhat tedious to be rereading the same stories again. There were new stories in the book from Marius' life that did keep me interested, but I felt like way too much time was spent on stuff that had been gone over in previous books. While the new material was interesting/entertaining to read about, I'm not really sure it added much to the series show more and it felt a bit superfluous to me. I ended up rating the book with three stars, and I'd probably only recommend it to those who are big fans of Anne Rice's vampire books and really like the characters of Marius, Armand, and Pandora. show less

Solita nota negativa per la traduzione del titolo: non solo non rende il riferimento alle catene di oro e sangue che hanno trattenuto la furia di Lestat al termine di Memnoch, ma ormai abbiamo una sfilza di titoli (in italiano) che si compongono di nome e qualifica del protagonista (Memnoch il diavolo, Armand il vampiro, Merrick la strega, Il vampiro Marius…che noia!)
Il libro in sé è pregevole, purtroppo sembra che la Rice con il tempo sia stata vittima del suo stesso stile e ci presenti alla fine la stessa struttura narrativa: introduzione con incontro tra due vampiri, la storia della vita del narratore, una conclusione che lega il romanzo al ciclo.
Poste queste condizioni il romanzo è piacevole da leggere, ma va affrontato con la show more consapevolezza che non succede nulla di eclatante e che in fondo sia stato scritto soltanto per i fan.
L’unica critica vera che sento di muovere a questo romanzo riguarda la parte centrale: per quanto sia interessante approfondire la vita di Marius, vengono sacrificati i periodi storici potenzialmente più affascinanti, compreso il medioevo: che la Rice sia una positivista? L’altro punto negativo è sul ripetere la sequenza sulla creazione di Armand già letta nel libro a lui dedicato, ripetizione inutile: peccato!
Bella ma poco approfondita la parte su Costantinopoli, ambientata male la parte rinascimentale italiana generalista e poco documentata. Solo per gli appassionati sfegatati. show less

Well this was a little strange. So much detail in places where we didn’t need it and so little in the places we did. It seems that Rice really knows the story of the ancient Egyptian origins of the story, and the birth and duty of Marius, but she knows precious little of the history in which Marius passed. The Reformation – she gave it a sentence. The fall of Rome and the rise of Constantinople she gave a few paragraphs. The Renaissance got a few distracted chapters during which Marius fell under the spell of egg tempera.

And the end – rushed is too kind a word. As I read about his getting back together with Pandora and he hadn’t even gotten to Lestat yet and there was only about ¼ of an inch of pages left – I knew the end show more would be miserable. I wasn’t disappointed.

Marius comes across as a self-serving ego-maniac the whole time. Always going on about his responsibility to the Devine Parents. The children he creates all abandon him because he always has to be “on”. He envisions himself as a great teacher and cannot stand it when his pupils actually begin to learn. That’s why he and Mael don’t get along – Mael doesn’t want to learn anything that Marius knows.

But the times we don’t know about aren’t elaborated on much. What he was before he was captured by Mael. Bah. show less

I was glad to pick up the tale of Marius. After reading about him in The Vampire Lestat and Queen of the Damned, along with Pandora, I was thrilled to read the back of this book with the synopsis. Of course, I had to buy it right away. I took it home and read it with eagerness. Ms. Rice's work is solid here and the story is very good, but while many parts are interesting to read, nearly half of it was repetition, and I wished that the Twins had been featured in this book more, especially Mekare. One thing I enjoyed was the appearance of Bianca. I absolutely loved that part, I think it was my favorite.

The ending left something to be desired. Not that it was a bad one per se, but it just... felt kind of rushed to me, quickly slapped show more together. I was happy to see the Twins, but their appearance was woefully brief and Ms. Rice could have focused more on that instead of repetition of what we already knew about Marius. show less