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Pandora: New Tales of the Vampires, Book 1
Unavailable
Pandora: New Tales of the Vampires, Book 1
Unavailable
Pandora: New Tales of the Vampires, Book 1
Audiobook9 hours

Pandora: New Tales of the Vampires, Book 1

Written by Anne Rice

Narrated by Kate Reading

Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

3.5/5

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Currently unavailable

Currently unavailable

About this audiobook

Anne Rice, creator of the Vampire Lestat, the Mayfair witches and the amazing worlds they inhabit, now gives us the first in a new series of novels linked together by the fledgling vampire David Talbot, who has set out to become a chronicler of his fellow Undead.

The novel opens in present-day Paris in a crowded café, where David meets Pandora. She is two thousand years old, a Child of the Millennia, the first vampire ever made by the great Marius. David persuades her to tell the story of her life.

Pandora begins, reluctantly at first and then with increasing passion, to recount her mesmerizing tale, which takes us through the ages, from Imperial Rome to eighteenth-century France to twentieth-century Paris and New Orleans. She carries us back to her mortal girlhood in the world of Caesar Augustus, a world chronicled by Ovid and Petronius. This is where Pandora meets and falls in love with the handsome, charismatic, lighthearted, still-mortal Marius. This is the Rome she is forced to flee in fear of assassination by conspirators plotting to take over the city. And we follow her to the exotic port of Antioch, where she is destined to be reunited with Marius, now immortal and haunted by his vampire nature, who will bestow on her the Dark Gift as they set out on the fraught and fantastic adventure of their two turbulent centuries together.

LanguageEnglish
Release dateJan 6, 1998
ISBN9781415920640
Unavailable
Pandora: New Tales of the Vampires, Book 1
Author

Anne Rice

A.N. Roquelaure is the pseudonym for bestselling author Anne Rice, the author of 25 books. She lives in New Orleans.

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Reviews for Pandora

Rating: 3.4136584454634145 out of 5 stars
3.5/5

1,025 ratings24 reviews

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  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Pandora wanted to set the record straight about Lestat's version of what Marius said about her. She does so, but not much more was revealed to us about her thousand-year life than the beginning and her transformation into a vampire. She wandered Europe for centuries, but chooses to spend 400 pages on the first 35 years of her life. It was still interesting to read about, but I was hoping for more than a rehash of things we pretty much already knew.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I was right to read this after reading Blood and Gold and before Prince Lestat. You would think that reading the books where character's stories intertwine one after the other might become monotonous. But not with Anne Rice. Each character's point of view is always different than what you heard from another character. I liked this volume a lot because it was historical - like Marius', set in ancient Rome and Antioch. I also liked Pandora as a woman. And while I expected more to Pandora's story, such as her later life after her journey with Marius, what was revealed was great.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Vampires in Italy. A fun historical Rice with some stilted language.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    As with all the books of Anne Rice I've read, the feelings I had about this book were quite conflicting. I liked reading it. Especially since it was mostly set in Ancient Rome. But something about her books always irks me a little. I have yet to figure out what it is that rubs me the wrong way. (But make no mistake I still enjoyed reading it.)
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    3.5 starsIn the first book of Anne Rice's New Tales of the Vampires, she looks back on the life of one of the original vampires, Pandora. As Pandora writes her own story, she goes back to her childhood in ancient Rome before she was a vampire, through the massacre of her family, and how she escaped to the port of Antioch (in what is now Turkey) and her life there.Mostly, I liked this. I got a bit bored with the vampire parts, though. Mostly I preferred Pandora's life story, and luckily that was the majority of the book. I do plan to continue with the next in the series, Vittorio the Vampire.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    I'm not sure why Rice doesn't clump this one in with the Chronicles where it should be. Pandora is incredibly intertwined in the other vampires lives...specifically in Marius'. I loved Pandora's character...her spunk, her intelligence, her daring. And her back story gives a great deal of insight into the Vampire's history and into their capabilities and needs. A must, must, must read!
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Interesting book. This time was in fact a re-read -- I first read this when it came out twelve or so years ago. It's been gathering dust in my library ever since. Turns out to have been good dust as the book is still worth reading.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    One of her vampire novels, Anne rice cleverly tells the tale of Marius' lover Pandora and thier life together. I enjoyed reading about the 2 charachters outside of the novels where they are only minor characters. I gave a greater ounderstanding of them. i liked the story very much and found it a great light read.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    This reminded me of my first experience with brandy: beautiful, by the look of it, but once sampled, found lacking. The ending was very hurried and there is an unfortunate stink of laziness with this version of an unrequited love that has (supposedly) spanned centuries.Sad. Marius's tale was so beautifully woven, but Pandora's account of her life and their love fell absolutely short of the mark. Not Rice's finest in the collection. Not my favorite by far. Given the choice between this and the disappointing brandy, I'd pick the cordial.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Pandora is addicting. From the book contruction to the story I was ensnared until the last page. It is a quick read and along the same lines as the rest of Anne Rice's works.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Although Marius is my favorite, Pandora is a close second amongst the many characters found throughout Anne Rice's vampire chronicles. In this edition, Pandora relates her life story with her characteristic attitude. Appropriate for high school and beyond.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    A delightful read. My first taste of Anne Rice's fiction and I am now a fan. The book contains wonderful glimpses of life in early post-Republican Rome. The quality of writing thoughout is engaging and powerful, as exemplified by this sentence on the last page: "I now contain - with this new curiosity, with this flaming capacity to care once more, with reborn capacity to sing - I now contain the awful capacity to want and to love."
  • Rating: 1 out of 5 stars
    1/5
    Sadly boring. Has a little bit of roman history, a little bit of vampire stuff, a little bit of Egyptian mythology, and not enough of any of those things to keep one truly interested.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    In this book Ms. Rice has Pandora write her history in the blank pages of a note book at the persuasion of David Talbot. We start in present day Paris, where David makes his request. And Pandora sems reluctant to comply. But she does start to write, and as she does we are transported to her past, the year 15 BC, Rome. She picks up he history when she was a mortal child in Imperial Rome when Caesar Augustus ruled. We see her meet and fall in love with the then mortal Marius. And all seems idyllic. But then events beyond her control, force her to flee her home city of Rome for Antioch. Her she tries to face her fears and the mystery of the dreams she has been having. And of course she is reunited with her Marius, who has gone through changes of his own. The Novel also gives you a quick glimpse of Imperial Rome from good years, to it falling apart and the cooruption that caused that. And the splendid port of Antioch is briefly covered. Pandora's interest let us become reaquinted with the sholars/philosophers of the time. And how their contemperaries thought of them. This book was a very fast read. And you do not need knowledge from any of the other novels to enjoy it.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    The reviews of the book said it was the most beautifully written on the vampire chronicle books and I was waiting for that to emerge but it never did. I believe that almost all of the other vampire books were written much better and developed much further than this one. It was actually a bit of a disappointment, although I still enjoyed it for the simple fact that I can't help but enjoy Anne Rice.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Great writing, great environment. Not too much plot. Cool seeing a young Marius. Cool historical references.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    I liked it for what it was, but had expectation of more. It featured tales of the past mingled with mythology. Unfortunately, she basically just told of her relationship with Marius & her creation. I wish she went more into what happened to her after she & Marius parted ways.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    i know, i know. but i will always read what she writes. i started young & i started with the first of the series.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    New tales of the vampires series. I read this so long ago, I don't really remember it. I know it was good and worth the read. But that's it.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    A fairly good book -- much quicker read than most of Rice's stuff. More back story on the whole Vampire Chronicle-thing, but this time with a decidedly heterosexual female character. Reminded me a little of McCullough's Rome stuff with the ancient Rome/Greece historical setting. Overall, pretty good.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    A compelling story about love, wrapped in Rice's trademark turgid prose. The vampire Pandora details her life, from wealthy Roman woman to Paris sophisticate, and in the process rediscovers her love for Marius, a vampire who has loved her for two thousand years. The research Rice put into this is sometimes obvious, but always interesting. The only fully formed character is the narrator, but there is a nice contrast between Pandora's thoughtful hedonism and Marius' almost stereotypically brooding vampire.It's been years since I read Rice's vampire chronicles (and totally missed the last three or four books). I sometimes felt that the narrator was talking about events and characters I should know, but didn't, without the backstory necessary to understand the plot.
  • Rating: 1 out of 5 stars
    1/5
    This was a discarded library book and I picked it up because the price was right and I thoroughly enjoyed the vampire trilogy that started with Interview and ended with Queen of the Damned.

    Pandora's story was mildly interesting at points but mostly irritating. I don't love Rice's style of writing and it's really the plot that enticed my interest in the first 3. I didn't like Pandora, the character, and I couldn't care less about any of the other characters. Half the time that I was reading it I was deciding to just quit when something piqued my interest, and then the cycle would begin again.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Pandora begins, reluctantly at first and then with increasing passion, to recount her mesmerizing tale, which takes us through the ages, from Imperial Rome to eighteenth-century France to twentieth-century Paris and New Orleans. She carries us back to her mortal girlhood in the world of Caesar Augustus, a world chronicled by Ovid and Petronius. This is where Pandora meets and falls in love with the handsome, charismatic, lighthearted, still-mortal Marius. This is the Rome she is forced to flee in fear of assassination by conspirators plotting to take over the city. And we follow her to the exotic port of Antioch, where she is destined to be reunited with Marius, now immortal and haunted by his vampire nature, who will bestow on her the Dark Gift as they set out on the fraught and fantastic adventure of their two turbulent centuries together.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I just re-read this book. Anne Rice writing is something to behold. Her stories are captivating..I must admit, though, I sometimes get lost in the time-scheme of things and I find myself thinking, wait; I thought that was just one day, when in actuality it was many weeks.