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| Blood and Gold (Anne Rice) | 
| Author: Anne Rice
Creator: Derek Jacobi
Publisher: Random House Audio
Category: Book
Buy New: $39.84
New (3) from $39.84
Avg. Customer Rating:  192 reviews
Sales Rank: 2333700
Format: Abridged, Audiobook
Media: Audio Cassette
Edition: Abridged
Number Of Items: 4
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.4
Dimensions (in): 7.1 x 4.5 x 1.2
ISBN: 0375416633
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN: 9780375416637
ASIN: 0375416633
Publication Date: October 16, 2001
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Editorial Reviews:
Amazon.com Review
Time heals all wounds, unless, of course, you're a vampire. Cuts may heal, burns vanish, limbs reattach, but for the "blood god," the wounds of the heart sometimes stay open and raw for centuries. So it is for Marius, Anne Rice's oft-mentioned and beloved scholar. We've heard parts of his tale in past volumes of the Vampire Chronicles, but never so completely and never from his own lips. In Blood and Gold, Rice mostly (but not entirely) avoids the danger of treading worn ground as she fills out the life and character of Marius the Lonely, the Disenchanted, the Heartsick--a 2,000-year-old vampire "with all the conviction of a mortal man." Plucked from his beloved Rome in the prime of his life and forced into solitude as keeper of the vampire queen and king, Marius has never forgiven the injustice of his mortal death. Thousands of years later, he still seethes over his losses. Immortality for Marius is both a blessing and a curse--he bears "witness to all splendid and beautiful things human," yet is unable to engage in relationships for fear of revealing his burden. New readers to the Chronicles may wish for a more fleshed-out, less introspective hero, but Rice's legions of devoted fans will recognize Blood and Gold for what it is: a love song to Marius the Wanderer, whose story reveals the complexities and limitations of eternal existence. --Daphne Durham
Product Description
Read by
4 cassettes/6 hours
The Vampire Chronicles continue with Anne Rice's spellbinding new novel.
Out of the pages of the Vampire Chronicles steps the golden-haired Marius, true Child of the Millenia, once mentor to the Vampire Lestat, always and forever the conscientious slayer of the evildoer, and now ready to reveal the secrets of his two-thousand-year-long existence in his own intense voice.
Born in Imperial Rome, imprisoned and made a "blood god" by the ancient Druids, Marius is the baffled yet powerful protector of Akasha and Enkil, Queen and King of the vampires, in whom the core of the race resides.
We follow his through his tragic loss of the vampire Pandora, his lover and fledgling creation. Through him we see the fall of pagan Rome to the Christendom of Constantine, and the sack of the Eternal City by the Visigoths. We see him sailing to the glittering city of Constantinople.
Worlds within worlds unfold as Marius, surviving the Dark Ages and the Black Death, emerges in the midst of the Italian Renaissance to create magnificient paintings and a vampire—the boy Armand.
Moving from Florence, Venice, Dresden, Paris, and the English castle of the secret and scholarly order of the Talamasca, the novel reaches its dramatic finale in a jungle paradise where the oldest of the vampires reigns supreme.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 187 more reviews...
 i couldn't pick it up... August 10, 2008
I loved every one of this series, but this one made me yawn, i have owned this book for years and STILL haven't finished it. not riveting at all...
Fire really isn't all that important to a Vampire Hmm?? November 13, 2007
1 out of 3 found this review helpful
It's a good thing that Anne Rice has decided to only write inspirationals from now on. Truly it is because her novels have degenerated beyond repemption. At least I won't be surprised if the last two of her novels I have left to read are any indication.
Sloppiness can be an art form true. But even well done sloppines is too good of a term for her work in the twenty-first century. Consider herein Rice in 1530s Venice says of a contemporary that they "surely" know the age of an artifact from ancient Antioch. Sheer rubish. Unless of course word-of-mouth is a new power of "creatures" back then. Again folks get ready for the disruptive addiction Rice has to the word "creature."
But then fire has always been a way to kill a vampire. Either from the Sun or not. But then Marius spends 400 pages in his book and never says a word about getting burned out of his gord one night. Not a peep.
Sloppiness is surely one thing that Anne Rice could spend a little time trying to avoid. I am not one to nit pick over every discrepency in this Author's works only because I am at he close of her career as it stands now. But I will miss her.
 What the...? September 14, 2007
2 out of 3 found this review helpful
I thought this author hated fan fiction. I mean, on her web site she forbade her fans from writing any more of it back in 2000.
And yet, skimming through this book, I saw scene after scene, dialog thread after dialog thread, that seemed to have been plucked directly from some of the (much better written) fan fiction I've encountered over the years. Take the scene in which Marius and Thorne go out to the local watering hole and meet up with three ladies, for instance. I read that same scene in a piece of fan fic fully two years before this book was released. The fan's scene involved different characters, but otherwise it was nearly verbatim.
Then again, maybe that was the real reason she demanded all fan fiction be removed from the Internets.
Outside of that rather intriguing item, this book was a crashing bore.
 Not Free SF Reader September 3, 2007
0 out of 2 found this review helpful
Blood and Gold is an example of another book of the Vampire Chronicles series that is of around the same quality as The Vampire Armand.
Instead of Armand though, this is Marius' story, and Armand is of course part of this. However, the major focus is his discovery of a vapire, his turning, and his eventual custodianship of the two ancient statue-like vampire elders, and the problems this causes.
 I love this book August 24, 2007
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
This book is one of my personal favorites for Anne Rice. Mostly just because the character Marius from the vampire chronicles is also one of my favorites. I love the writing in the book. It is very detailed, as any avid Anne Rice/vampire chronicles fan can attest too, but it doesn't slip into the long-windedness that becomes boring either.
But I loved the story, chronicling from the great Imperial Rome into the Byzantine Empire and then the Italian Renissance until now. There is a love for the each of the time periods described that really comes through.
Being an Anne Rice fan, this book truly is one of my favorites of hers. But as I said, her character of Marius was always one of my favorites anyways.
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