Anne Rice fans will greet Pandora: New Tales of the Vampires, the first of her new vampire chronicles, as hungrily as the Fang Gang facing a fresh new neck. Our heroine, Pandora, a senator's daughter in Augustus Caesar's day, flees to Antioch when her family gets killed and discovers the antidote to stern Roman rationalism in the occult wisdom of the East. "Something attacked my reason," Pandora writes. "The very thing the Roman Emperors had so feared in Egyptian cults and Oriental cults swept over me: mystery and emotion which claim a superiority to reason and law."
Pandora has intellectual thirst as well as blood lust, and she conveys the high old time Rice obviously had imbibing historical lore. "It is fun to read these mad Gnostics!" exults Pandora in the early Christian era. It is also fun to read this mad Pandora. Anne Rice hasn't been this fun to read in years.
In a swirling universe filled with death and life, corruption and innocence, this mesmerizing novel takes us on a wondrous journey back through the centuries to a civilization half-human, of wholly mysterious origin, at odds with mortality and immortality, justice and guilt. It is an enchanted, hypnotic world that could only come from the imagination of Anne Rice.
At the center of this dark and compelling tale is Rowan Mayfair, queen of the coven, who must flee from the darkly brutal, yet irresistable demon known as Lasher. With a dreamlike power, this wickedly seductive entity draws us through twilight paths, telling a chilling and hypnotic story of spiritual aspiration and passion.
"The End of Faith by Sam Harris is a genuinely frightening book about terrorism, and the central role played by religion in justifying and rewarding it. Others blame “extremists” who “distort” the “true” message of religion. Harris goes to the root of the problem: religion itself. Even moderate religion is a menace, because it leads us to respect and “cherish the idea that certain fantastic propositions can be believed without evidence”. Why do men like Bin Laden commit their hideous cruelties? The answer is that they “actually believe what they say they believe”. Read Sam Harris and wake up. — professor Richard Dawkins, The Guardian
"Do we need another book on the conflict between reason and faith? Yes, if it is as well-written as Sam Harris’s The End of Faith.” — New Scientist
“At last we have a book that focuses on the common thread that links Islamic terrorism with the irrationality of all religious faith. The End of Faith will challenge not only Muslims but Hindus, Jews and Christians as well.”
— Peter Singer,professor of philosophy at Princeton and author of The President of Good and Evil: The Ethics of George W. Bush.
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Pumukl
Setting aside his wildly popular Forgotten Realms books for the moment, Bob Salvatore continues to wade into his character-development-heavy Demon Wars saga with this meaty kickoff to the latest DW series. If you're familiar with the series (and if you're not, start with The Demon Awakens), you know that this ain't Icewind Dale. The generously developed characters take center stage, and they--much to our initial dismay, perhaps--are far from invincible. (More than a few hearts were broken when Elbryan the Nightbird, Touel'alfar-trained ranger extraordinaire, bit the dust in the last book, Demon Apostle.)
