Pandora - Anne Rice > Reviews > Panning Pandora

Author's product rating:   

Would you listen to it again?	No, never
Story	Very weak
Characters	Satisfactory
Listenability	A no-goer
How does it compare to audio works by the same author?	Poor

Advantages:	None
Disadvantages:	Over indulgent, trite, boring .

Recommend to potential buyers:

no

Full review

If you are familiar with the Vampire Chronicles (Interview with a Vampire etc) then I would assume you are like me, you wanted to read this book out of interest as you enjoyed the previous tales about Lestat and his gang.

You might also think that Nemnoch and The Body Thief were naff but, hey, I’ll give this one a go, Anne Rice might return to her old self and not be so self indulgent in her story-telling this time round.

Those of you who have not read any of the Vampire Chronicles may find yourself late for a long train journey scanning the paperback stall at the station and grabbing the only horror book on display. If you are this poor soul, you will have to wade through over two hundred pages of descriptive writing that could and should have been condensed to half its size before anything of interest appears.

You might even lay the book aside and look at the countryside instead, or study the pimply-faced teenager sat across from you wondering if he will pop that bogey in his mouth.

If you are interested in what kind of clothes and make-up a female Roman would wear, if you want to read – in great detail – about the life of a Roman, about poets and profits and religion then, shucks, this is the one for you!

The actual story begins with Lestat’s buddy David Talbot asking Pandora (a vampire, of course, who enjoys not only sucking blood from veins, but from hearts, too) to write her life story for him. Well, his pal Lestat is in a coma and he probably doesn’t have much to do at the moment. Pandora agrees and there follows page upon page of mundane boredom with little happening until around the page two hundred mark when Pandora becomes a vampire.

There are some old favourites from the Vampire Chronicles here, Marius to name one, but nothing much else to keep the reader occupied where the ending just cannot come soon enough. This novel, really, should have been a short story but the waffling, painstaking and eye-closing narrative has made Pandora quite simply boring.

The plot, the plot, you cry. Well… there is none… not really.

Last page: the Vampire Chronicles will continue. Lord, save us, please! And it did continue and still does, churning out tales of vampire like an over active Ciao reviewer…

:0)