Cav's Place

Great for the first eight chapters… Odd after that.
Anne Rice is amazing when she writes about vampires, but when she adds religious characters into the mix, everything gets blurry. “Memnoch the Devil” was superb, as both style of writing and ideas, but she should have left it there.
To add something else, Lestat is Lestat. After reading “his” books, he will always be The Vampire to me, not only when it comes to Anne Rice’s work, not only when it comes to books, but in general. Seeing something else, especially if it’s by Anne Rice, that tries to raise another vampire close to Lestat’s level simply seems wrong now.
You might also notice some discrepancies. For example Lestat and Louis said they have a hard time remembering what happened before they became vampires, save from a few important moments of their mortal lives that were stuck in their minds. But then Vittorio talks quite at length about his mortal life, and let’s not mention Pandora, as in her case just about the whole book is about her mortal life. And Lestat, Louis and even Pandora describe the process of turning into vampires as painful and taking a while, but then you have Vittorio who drinks Ursula’s blood and immediately notices his skin turning white and the thirst for blood and is able to spring into action and fly after Ursula! How long did any other of Rice’s vampires take before they were able to fly?
And a question… What is Vittorio still doing “alive” anyway? In “Queen of the Damned“, Akasha killed all vampires, except the ones who she spared for Lestat’s sake and “some young rogues who hid well enough and a few ancients who refused to interfere”, to quote from memory. Vittorio doesn’t know Lestat, is not a young rogue and is not one of the ancients, so will someone please explain why is he still “alive”?

To conclude, the strictly vampire parts are superbly written, but the other things thrown into the mix at the wrong moments and the discrepancies with her other books reduce “Vittorio“‘s value somewhat.

Rating: 8/10