Reviews

Vittorio, the Vampire by Anne Rice

cecilyroseceillam's review

adventurous dark emotional mysterious fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.0

The first half of vittorio is amazing and extremely engaging, the descriptions of Italy are beautiful once again and the way the art is described along with the clothes and architecture is beautiful too. The mystery of the red court was fun and reminded me a lot of the children of darkness which we saw in the previous books. And then this weird pacing issue comes in where the last half of the book feels like unfinished drafts from the vampire armand and Memnoch the devil, and it’s very disorienting. We’re suddenly on a quest with angels to kill vampires when it’s written like vittorio is going to be turned into one. And then we go back to how it was paced and written in the first half, and it feels like you’re reading another book at the same time. The writing is still good but the pacing was pretty bad here and not much really sense, overall this book really felt like a bunch of drafts from her other books that she just threw into one book and it really feels like she was meeting a publishing deadline with this book. The only other interesting thing that hooked me was the ancient Italian and Roman politics which she clearly knew a lot about and it very much reminded me of Dante’s work. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Child death, Death, and Blood

kenoughbi's review against another edition

2.5

wasted potential tbh. and there was no need for angels

missmim's review against another edition

1.0

Obviously Rice is just trying to make a buck off of these tiny little books about vampires that barely exist in the Chronicles. You can skip them all except The Vampire Armand.

erinla42's review against another edition

dark emotional reflective slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

pachypedia's review against another edition

3.0

Este libro me ha dejado un pocoa fría. No es el peor libro de Anne Rice, pero tampoco es el mejor. Se lee bien, pero no tiene nada que lo haga especial, salvo que el tema religioso es más importante en este libro que el tema vampírico.

wannabekingpin's review against another edition

4.0

The story spins around Vittorio as the sole survivor of his family, out for vengeance and vampire blood. Tricked and toyed with he looks like one of those Young Adult book characters, a young warrior with no more than a sword against the darkest forces pits of hell could produce. It was good in a sense that it no longer felt stamped, as Chronicles started feeling to me. And the rest of this is at [NMR]

sandracabanes's review against another edition

1.0

Siento mucho esto, pero realmente no he entendido nada de lo que ha pasado en el libro. Sinceramente no sé si yo soy el problema o es que solo es confuso en sí. Vittorio es un joven noble de la Toscana que se ve envuelto en una "guerra" con un clan de vampiros que atemorizan la región, y en su camino de venganza todo se queda en nada. La premisa me parecía muy interesante, en especial por el contexto histórico y el lugar, y me ha defraudado porque he encontrado algo muy distinto a lo que esperaba (que si al menos lo hubiera disfrutado no me habría quejado, pero no es el caso). El ritmo es lento, muy lento en algunas partes, y algunas conversaciones pueden ser confusas. Tengo la sensación de que la autora pretende decir algo más trascendental y yo no he sido capaz de verlo (o solo es que me quiero decir esto en base a lo que vi en Entrevista con el vampiro). Una lástima, aun así probaré con más de la autora.

krish_'s review against another edition

2.0

Eh. Read this years and years ago and I haven't felt inclined to read another Anne Rice novel. And I don't think it was the story but rather her writing, it was just so bland. No flare, no poetry, no taste. It was not at all what I expected and I fell hard with disappointment.

barebookbear's review

3.0

I was prepared not to like this one. I was pleasantly surprised. She doesn't go way off the rails into dreamy crazy-town territory when it comes to her often-used overly lush and sentimentally poetic descriptions, like in her Armand book. She keeps the story-telling fairly straightforward. I liked how this book stands completely on its own with almost no mention of the Chronicle vampires.

While it may not be completely successful, I can appreciate her attempts to paint an historical location for us, this time of early fifteenth century (Northern?) Italy, using geography, religious beliefs and historical artists. Vitoria becomes a character in a particular place and time and reacts as such to that.

I also kept thinking as I read it that this would make a great movie. The storyline stands alone, with rather specific and picaresque scenes of beauty and horror. The whole blood communion sequence would make a great Act 2 in a film, and the storyline of the perfect isolated town slowly revealing the reason for its perfection would play out very well on film.

The mixture of angels and demons didn't bother me; that's been an ongoing theme in Rice's work through her whole career and makes sense for her personally as she travels her own spiritual journeys, her own questions that probably started with the death of her young daughter.

It's not perfect, but worth the short time it takes to move through it.

larsbars's review against another edition

1.0

no bueno.