Review on: Vittorio the Vampire by Anne Rice
Series: The Vampire Chronicles
Rating: 3/5
Vittorio the Vampire is a creatively written story by Anne Rice, introducing to us Vittorio who is a very educated nobleman born in the mountains north of Tuscany. Before he became a vampire, Vittorio was a strapping educated young man who was gifted in physical attributes, but also gifted of mind. Learned because of his having traveled to places like Florence where he cultivated his love of literature and the arts. It is when he is 16years old that his quiet and peaceful world is destroyed by what he believes to be demons. All of his family members are attacked and killed when their compound is infiltrated, and he is spared by the kindness of one of these female monsters. It is then that he goes off to seek vengeance for his family’s death.
He soon learns that these demons are blood-sucking vampires who are creatures of the night, and that some towns actually pay them homage in return for their safety, by giving these vampires unwanted members of society like the sick, the dying, the misshapen, the old, and such. It is during his discovery that he is chanced upon by a creature of the night and taken to their abode, but not before having killed his abductor, and then having his life spared again by the same female creature that spared his life when Vittorio’s home was attacked.
The Court of the Ruby Grail – the Court of Vampires from long before men lived in that part of the world. Ursula, the female vampire who begs for Vittorio’s life, saves Vittorio from being killed by the Court for being impudent and unfailing in his philosophies. It is here though that he is poisoned and then left to wander in Florence, and this poison allows him later to see angels whom he is able to convince to aid him in taking revenge for his family. And it is later these angels that Vittorio disappoints and fails when in his quest to destroy the very things that killed his family, he is unable to kill the female vampire who saved him and who he has fallen in love with. Despite his revulsion of the vampires, he is tricked into becoming the very thing he loathes and goes on a blood-seeking adventure with Ursula.
It is only later that Vittorio is back in Florence and finds himself face to face with the angels he had faced, most especially the strongest of them, who grants Vittorio one last gift….a curse to what remains of his humanity.
