The Vampire Armand : The Vampire Chronicles (Rice, Anne, Vampire Chronicles)

From The Publisher: In The Latest Installment Of The Vampire Chronicles, Anne Rice Summons Up Dazzling Worlds To Bring Us The Story Of Armand-eternally Young, With The Face Of A Botticelli Angel. Armand, Who First Appeared In All His Dark Glory More Than Twenty Years Ago In The Now-classic Interview With The Vampire, The First Of The Vampire Chronicles, The Novel That Established Its Author Worldwide As A Magnificent Storyteller And Creator Of Magical Realms. Now, We Go With Armand Across The Centuries To The Kiev Rus Of His Boyhood-a Ruined City Under Mongol Dominion - And To Ancient Constantinople, Where Tartar Raiders Sell Him Into Slavery. And In A Magnificent Palazzo In The Venice Of The Renaissance We See Him Emotionally And Intellectually In Thrall To The Great Vampire Marius, Who Masquerades Among Humankind As A Mysterious, Reclusive Painter And Who Will Bestow Upon Armand The Gift Of Vampiric Blood. As The Novel Races To Its Climax, Moving Through Scenes Of Luxury And Elegance, Of Ambush, Fire, And Devil Worship To Nineteenth-century Paris And Today's New Orleans, We See Its Eternally Vulnerable And Romantic Hero Forced To Choose Between His Twilight Immortality And The Salvation Of His Immortal Soul. By Anne Rice. SUMMARY: In the latest installment of The Vampire Chronicles, Anne Rice summons up dazzling worlds to bring us the story of Armand--eternally young, with the face of a Botticelli angel. Armand, who first appeared in all his dark glory more than twenty years ago in the now-classicInterview with the Vampire, the first of The Vampire Chronicles, the novel that established its author worldwide as a magnificent storyteller and creator of magical realms. Now, we go with Armand across the centuries to the Kiev Rus of his boyhood--a ruined city under Mongol dominion--and to ancient Constantinople, where Tartar raiders sell him into slavery. And in a magnificent palazzo in the Venice of the Renaissance we see him emotionally and intellectually in thrall to the great vampire Marius, who masquerades among humankind as a mysterious, reclusive painter and who will bestow upon Armand the gift of vampiric blood. As the novel races to its climax, moving through scenes of luxury and elegance, of ambush, fire, and devil worship to nineteenth-century Paris and today's New Orleans, we see its eternally vulnerable and romantic hero forced to choose between his twilight immortality and the salvation of his immortal soul. In the latest installment of The Vampire Chronicles, Anne Rice summons up dazzling worlds to bring us the story of Armand–eternally young, with the face of a Botticelli angel. Armand, who first appeared in all his dark glory more than twenty years ago in the now-classic Interview with the Vampire, the first of The Vampire Chronicles, the novel that established its author worldwide as a magnificent storyteller and creator of magical realms. Now, we go with Armand across the centuries to the Kiev Rus of his boyhood–a ruined city under Mongol dominion–and to ancient Constantinople, where Tartar raiders sell him into slavery. And in a magnificent palazzo in the Venice of the Renaissance we see him emotionally and intellectually in thrall to the great vampire Marius, who masquerades among humankind as a mysterious, reclusive painter and who will bestow upon Armand the gift of vampiric blood. As the novel races to its climax, moving through scenes of luxury and elegance, of ambush, fire, and devil worship to nineteenth-century Paris and today’s New Orleans, we see its eternally vulnerable and romantic hero forced to choose between his twilight immortality and the salvation of his immortal soul. --jacket The previous volume of the Vampire Chronicles, Memnoch the Devil, was called 'a modern Paradise Lost' by the Washington Post. Taking the Vampire Lestat from fiction into legend, it left him lying in a New Orleans convent, at the edge of death. Magnificent and electrifying, this new volume in the Vampire Chronicles returns to the glittering story of Armand, mesmerizing leader of the vampire coven at the eighteenth-century Theatre des Vampires in Paris (seductively played by Antonio Banderas in the film of Interview with the Vampire). Snatched from the steppes of Russia as a child, and sold as a slave in Renaissance Venice, Armand's story sweeps through several hundred years, to New Orleans at the end of the twentieth century, where Lestat lies waiting for immortality, and the legend continues to grow....