The Vampire Vivienne

"I was not always the demon in the mirror." What a great hook, and Karen E. Taylor's fifth entry into her Vampire Legacy does not let you down. Her characters are fully developed, and it is obvious that she knows them very well. Never having read any of The Vampire Legacy books, this was a real feast. Vivienne Courbet is a beautiful young woman who recognizes the power of staying young forever, and embraces her new life with zest. Her nearly three hundred years of exploits are chronicled in this book. Vivienne has deep emotions and that makes her very real. Yes, Vampires do have emotions, or Taylor has convinced me that they exist as sensitive monsters. Not all are sensitive . . . as we soon discover. Max and Victor -- are they good or bad vampires? That may seem an odd question until you meet Vivienne's lost love. Diego is vicious, he loves the kill, and he must be destroyed. The hatred she feels at his death poisons her thoughts, and she returns to the House of the Swan in Paris. When the French Revolution claws and beheads their way through the aristocracy, she refuses to believe they mean "her." Enter Eduard DeRouchard. Passion fills their nights from their first gaze. He is not the perfection our lusty heroine believes him to be; we see that he is too good to be real, but love's first blush is blind. Additionally, a jealous vampire is dangerous.This book is part of the history of The Vampire Legacy. Travel with Vivienne from Paris in 1719 to the present day New Orleans. Definitely, a "must" for the Legacy fans. This is an excellent escape for those of us who still have such delights in our reading future. Five golden stars for a master story teller.Victoria Tarrani

Having already been a fan of the series, I looked forward to this book with anticipation. I have to say that it surprised me with how different it was from the other books and also how good it was. Vivienne, who has always been a supporting character gets her spotlight and lives (if you will pardon the expression) up to it. This book builds on the other 4 books, but also takes detours of its own to the French Revolution and visits with familiar characters as they were in the past. Contrary to some of the reviews here, I find that this book has much more plot that the previous installments and it is my personal favorite of the series.

Up front: I don't like vampire fiction (or horror in general) and almost never read it. My idea of Hell is being forced to read the entire collected works of Ann Rice.So when THE VAMPIRE VIVIENNE was given to me, I opened it with no confidence at all that I would be able to get past the first chapter or two. But Karen Taylor is a professional colleague whose talents I greatly respect, so I gave it a try.What followed could serve as the definitive example of the phrase "pleasantly surprised." I LOVED it.Why? I think because the characters - and this is unique among the vampire books I've tried to read - are fully realized, believable people, not just melodramatic constructs. Most of the vampire-novel characters I've seen are about as credible as the cast of a soap opera. Karen Taylor, however, makes hers come alive; I feel I KNOW them. (Some of them better than I would prefer, actually. This is a very scary book in places - precisely because you can believe in the characters, their relationships and motives, and that makes the menace much more real.)It seems strange to speak of one of the Undead as a living, breathing personality (I almost said "full-blooded", aaghh) but you know what I mean.This is also a very erotic book - not in the all-too-common soft-BDSM-porn sense, but in a subtler, more elegant way. I confess to having the hots for Vivienne. She can bite me any time.Buy this book and read it. Ignore the people who complained because they couldn't understand the plot, or because it didn't fit the traditional (i.e. hackneyed) vampire-fiction templates. This is a hell of a book. Karen Taylor is a hell of a writer.

The Vampire Legacy keeps getting richer and richer. In the latest entry (#5), we turn to Vivienne, the current "leader" of the Cadre. This is Vivienne's life story from birth in pre-Revolutionary France to the present and, also, a deeper look into Ms. Taylor's vampire mythos. In order to not give spoilers, I won't give much detail, except to say that the narrative is full of twists and turns. As with Ms. Taylor's other works, the characterizations are first-rate, but in the Vampire Vivienne we get more developed plotting and a number of new and memorable characters. These books are so vivid and cinematic, when do we get a movie?

There are vampire novels and romance novels and historical novels and even historical vampire romance novels. As a rule I don't read many of them. Then there are Karen E. Taylor novels. Unless she has some hidden away in her desk (you never know), I've read all of them at least twice. This is not quite as odd as it may seem, because if I happen to like a book there's no telling how many times I'll read it.THE VAMPIRE VIVIENNE, the fifth book in Ms. Taylor's Vampire Legacy series, has managed to surprise me, and I don't surprise easily. The cast of characters includes several we know from her previous books, so the novel has a warm and familiar feel to it. This in itself is surprising, because THE VAMPIRE VIVIENNE is a departure from Ms. Taylor's previous novels. The universe of the Vampire Legacy stories is expanding.To begin with there are new characters: Monique and Eduard, both of whom we meet in eighteenth century France, come to mind immediately - and there are Others. There are definitely Others.Characters we know from Ms. Taylor's previous novels are given much greater depth: the enigmatic Max (a personal favorite of mine), Victor, and of course Vivienne Courbet herself. We follow her for three centuries.What kind of person - what kind of vampire - is capable of surviving in a hostile and dangerous world for more than three hundred years? I started this book with very definite ideas and assumptions about that. Ms. Taylor's imagination has proved itself broader and deeper than mine. The growth and development of the vampire Vivienne is not what I expected after reading the first four Vampire Legacy novels.For a few pages I had trouble believing what I was reading. Then, barely noticing the change, I had trouble not believing it. Vivienne Courbet is someone other than I had expected. Someone much more interesting.I can think of no way to explain why THE VAMPIRE VIVIENNE is a compelling and thoroughly entertaining novel without revealing too much of the plot. You'll simply have to read the book yourself. After that your reaction may be the same as mine: I want to read the next book in the series _now_.