Blood and Mold
A review of Anne Rice's Blood and Gold
Blood and Gold is the Vampire Chronicle by Anne Rice about her Roman Vampire Marius, whose back story is first told to us in the novel The Vampire Lestat. Much like with The Vampire Armand (whose story is also first told in The Vampire Lestat) I think it would be best for most people to just stick with the earlier books.
Continuity errors bug me and like most of the later Vampire Chronicles by Anne Rice this one is riddled with them.
Personality inconsistancy: Marius went from the kindly father figure character to a whining, child-like character in Blood and Gold. Not to mention the S and M whippings in The Vampire Armand when in The Vampire Lestat Armand told Lestat Marius would never harm him. Now he's coming off as a pervert. Also he blames Lestat for Akasha rising. How could he? It was Akasha who told Lestat her name when Marius took Lestat to the island. It was Akasha who opened the tabernacle and planted the idea in his head to play Nicholas' violin for her. And it was Marius who had Lestat's music videos video taped for her to watch yet he blames Lestat for her rising? I can't believe he's become so illogical so quickly.
Up until about Tale of the Body thief we see Marius as the kindly father figure who called Lestat the damned creature in a playful bemused sort of way.
In The Vampire Armand we're told Marius physically whipped Armand and was into S and M with young boys. There is no such mention of this in the earlier books. Then by Blood and Gold he's a whining child in that he blames Lestat for things Lestat could not be accountable for.
Marius is the one who took Lestat to the island. Akasha is the one who planted the idea in Lestat's head to play Nicki's violin for her. She opened the tabernacle for him. Then he, himself, was going to play Lestat's music videos for them and yet when Akasha rose to Lestat's music videos Marius blames Lestat. It was all Akasha's choosing. Why would the wise and patient Marius suddenly act like a child and not think logically? Why would his life in the past suddenly be described differently from The Vampire Armand on ward? He, like Lestat, and Maharet are basically behaving like their own opposites in the later books.
In Blood and Gold Marius claims vampires to be immune to dirt (supposedly it won't cling to them) yet the Satanic vampires under Les Innocents in The Vampire Lestat were filthy and Lestat is quoted as saying Eleni would be pretty if she would be forced to stand under a water fall to wash the dirt off of her. Also, Marius himself was filthy after being trapped in the ice in The queen of the damned novel. And Lestat was filthy when Marius pulled him out of the Earth in The Vampire Lestat novel.
In Blood and Gold Maharet (the vampire whom had lost her eyes before ever becoming a vampire) takes the eyes of a fellow vampire. She chains up a fellow vampire and plucks out his eyes, promising to take care of him. This vampire is an old rival of hers who claimed he was going to kill her.
Maharet takes his eyes at the end of Blood and Gold. Ironically he's the one who suggests she should do it. (Side note: He whispered something to the tongueless vampire, Mekare and no one has any idea what he said to her.) So Mahare took his eyes yet in every chronicle before this, for supposedly six-thousand-years, she has steadfastly made it clear that she would never take the eyes of any vampire, thinking it too cruel and disloyal to do that to her own kind. There is really no explanation for this change of heart.
In Blood and Gold we find out the chains that held Lestat at the end of Memnoch The Devil had Maharet's hair woven into them. Are we really to believe just because she's the oldest vampire that her hair is indestructible? Wasn't it plausible enough that heavy chains held Lestat? Also if her hair is indestructible how did she cut it to weave it into the chains? These are the chains Maharet uses on her vampire captive, whom she took the eyes of.
It's the personality and plot inconsistencies that bug me about this novel.