Pandora

By Anne Rice
Rating: Enjoyable.
Read: June 2005

I am not a fan of Anne Rice. I tried to read Interview With the Vampire years ago and failed miserably. There is nothing in her writing that goes unsaid- everything is laid out on the table. Sorry, but that’s boring, and makes for lousy prose. Pandora was a birthday gift, however, so I gave it a shot, and was pleasantly surprised.

You won’t need to be a hardcore Rice fan to pick this up. Pandora is a vampire living in modern times, but she was made during the great days of the Roman Empire. That was what hooked me- I’m a sucker for historical fiction. If there’s one thing Rice does well, it’s research, and in Pandora that research is flawlessly integrated. You’ll get a wonderfully normal sort of description of Pandora’s life and the world at that time- which ties into the fate of Pandora herself. Her path is forever tangled with that of Marius, a Roman man made a vampire before she. Marius and Pandora love each other deeply, but Marius abhors what they are, and he guards the Fount- the source of all vampirism.

Yes, that hooked me, too. For all you die-hard vampire fans, eat your hearts out: you’re going to have a run-in with Akasha, mother of all vampires. And she speaks.

For me, that’s enough to reccomend the book. It’s also rather small (meant to be a notebook; the story is told in first person by Pandora herself to her scholarly friend) and thus quite portable.

My only problem is that now I want to read more about Pandora and Marius, and I’ll have to pick my way past- ugh- Lestat. I can’t stand Lestat. I may be committing some crime against RiceFandom, but I hate the character of Lestat and hope he lies paralyzed on that cold stone floor for eternity. He’s a major reason for my never finishing Interview.

If any Rice fans happen by, please do me the favor of letting me know which book comes next in the tale of Pandora. I might be able to stand Lestat if I get to see more of Marius.