Blood and Gold

The Vampire Chronicles continue with Anne Rice's spellbinding new novel, in which the great vampire Marius returns.

The golden-haired Marius, true Child of the Millenia, once mentor to The Vampire Lestat, always and forever the conscientious foe of the Evil Doer, reveals in his own intense yet intimate voice the secrets of his two-thousand-year existence.

Once a prouc Senator in Imperial Rome, kidnapped and made a "blood god" by the Druids, Marius becomes the embittered protector of Akasha and Enkil, Queen and King of the vampires, in whom the core of the supernatural race resides.

We follow him through his heartbreaking abandonment of the vampire Pandora. Through him we see the fall of pagan Rome to the Emperor Constantine and the horrific sack of the Eternal City itself at the hands of the Visigoths.

Bravely, Marius seeks a new civilisation in the midst of glittering Constantinople, only to meet with the blood drinker Eudoxia. We see him ultimately returning to his beloved Italy, where after the horrors of the Black Death, he is restored by the beauty of the Renaissance. We see him become a painter living dangerously yet happily among mortals, giving his heart to the great Botticelli, to the bewitching courtesan Bianca, and to the mysterious young apprentice Armand.

Moving from Rome to Florence, Venice and Dresden, and to the English castle of the secret scholarly order of the Talamasca, the novel reaches its dramatic finale in our own time, deep in the jungle where Marius, having told his life story, seeks some measure of justice from the oldest vampires in the world.


	Here is the gorgeous and sinister story of Marius, patrician by birth, scholar by choice, one of the oldest vampires of them all, which sweeps from his genesis in ancient Rome, in the time of the Emperor Augustus, to his meeting in the present day with a creature of snow and ice. Thorne is a Northern vampire in search of Maharet, his 'maker', the ancient Egyptian vampire queen who holds him and others in thrall with chains made of her red hair, 'bound with steel and with her blood and gold'. When the Visigoths sack his city, Marius is there; with the resurgence of the glory that was Rome, he is there, still searching for his lost love Pandora, but bewitched in turn by Botticelli, by the Renaissance beauty Bianca, with her sordid secrets, and by the boy he calls Amadeo. Criss-crossing through the stories of other vampires from Rice's glorious Pantheon of the undead, haunted by Pandora and by his alter ego Mael, tracked by the Talamasca, the tale of Marius, the self-styled guardian of 'those who must be kept' is the most wondrous and mind-blowing of them all. Blood and Gold ~ Chatto & Windus 2001 (UK)	Blood and Gold ~ Chatto & Windus 2001 (UK)
	Blood and Gold ~ Knopf 2001 (US)	The Vampire Chronicles continue with Anne Rice's spellbinding new novel, in which the great vampire Marius returns. The golden-haired Marius, true Child of the Millenia, once mentor to The Vampire Lestat, always and forever the conscientious foe of the Evil Doer, reveals in his own intense yet intimate voice the secrets of his two-thousand-year existence. Once a prouc Senator in Imperial Rome, kidnapped and made a "blood god" by the Druids, Marius becomes the embittered protector of Akasha and Enkil, Queen and King of the vampires, in whom the core of the supernatural race resides. We follow him through his heartbreaking abandonment of the vampire Pandora. Through him we see the fall of pagan Rome to the Emperor Constantine and the horrific sack of the Eternal City itself at the hands of the Visigoths.
	Bravely, Marius seeks a new civilisation in the midst of glittering Constantinople, only to meet with the blood drinker Eudoxia. We see him ultimately returning to his beloved Italy, where after the horrors of the Black Death, he is restored by the beauty of the Renaissance. We see him become a painter living dangerously yet happily among mortals, giving his heart to the great Botticelli, to the bewitching courtesan Bianca, and to the mysterious young apprentice Armand. Moving from Rome to Florence, Venice and Dresden, and to the English castle of the secret scholarly order of the Talamasca, the novel reaches its dramatic finale in our own time, deep in the jungle where Marius, having told his life story, seeks some measure of justice from the oldest vampires in the world. Blood and Gold ~ Knopf 2001 (US) Twenty Six Years with my Beloved Immortals ~ Blood and Gold This novel is scheduled for publication in 2001. It's already written. It's finished. I can not say much about it, except that the teller of the tale is Marius, and indeed, the tale itself is his life of 2000 years. Once again, I returned to ancient Rome to make sure that Marius moved in a world of accurate detail and vibrant colour. But that is only the start of things. Marius makes a long journey to the present time, telling his side of events which have been described by others in whole or only in part, and confiding much more of his own triumphs and tragedy. Anne Rice
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