Readers would be hard-pressed to understand Rice's enormous popularity if they were to read only Memnoch the Devil (1995), Servant of the Bones (1996), and Violin (1997), her last three abysmal novels, but finally, thankfully, the Queen of the Blood Drinkers has returned to the source of her best work, her sexy and invincible vampires. This is the first in a projected series, New Tales of the Vampires, and that old Rice magic is back. Her characters are seductive, the settings romantic, the pace fast and furious, and the esoteric mumbo-jumbo suitably mystifying as she picks up the saga of Lestat in Paris, where a handsome and debonair fledgling vampire named David Talbot comes upon an ancient one busy sucking the life out of a young woman contemplating suicide along the Seine. He approaches Pandora, a porcelain-skinned, topaz-eyed beauty, and charms her into writing down the story of her remarkable 2,000-year life, from her mortal years as the only daughter of a wealthy Roman senator circa 15 B.C., to her exile in Antioch, initiation into the worship of the great goddess Isis, and vampiric love affair with the golden-haired Marius. Pandora is a superheroine: beautiful, of course, but also smart, fearless, independent, lusty, and resourceful, and so pumped up at the end of her breathless narrative, she takes off for New Orleans, hot on the trail of Lestat and Marius, suggesting that Talbot (and Rice fans) stay tuned for the next installment.

First sheaf in a new series by Rice, picking up where The Tale of the Body Thief (1992) left off and telling of 2,000-year- old Pandora, who is seduced in Paris by newly-fanged David Talbot, an elderly scholar, into writing her memoirs. Followers of Chelsea Quinn Yarbro's Count Saint-Germain vampire historicals will find themselves on familiar ground in Rice's Rome of Caesar Augustus. Remember that the stronger half of Rice's recent Servant of the Bones (1996), about the Wandering Babylonian Ghost Azriel, gave her purple pen free rein in limning the hanging garden, golden passageways, and other ornaments of Babylon. Similarly now, as she turns from modern Paris to ancient Rome, her writing lifts from gruelingly sloppy hackwork to tightly engaging prose, perhaps because this material marries research to make-believe: Give her some ground to stand on, and she tells a good story. Here, Pandora is 10, Marius 25—and not yet a vampire—when the two first meet in her father's palazzo. Twenty years and a pair failed marriages later, when her father is attacked by Augustus and she must flee to Antioch, Pandora finds herself overcome by dreams of bloodlust. She asks a priestess in Antioch: Do these blood dreams come from the goddess Isis? Then she meets Marius, whom she's adored from girlhood on, in the temple of Isis and goes to live with him. But Marius is now the caretaker of two living mummies or statues that Pandora mistakes for Isis and Osiris (or Horus), and Isis/Akasha bestows on her the dark gift in the novel's most ecstatic scene. Marius exhorts her, though, about her detestation of blood-drinkers and swears never to make another (which requires exchange of blood with the host). Forever fighting, the rational Marius and emotional Pandora care for the evil gods for two centuries, through the spread of Christianity, and then part, with a sequel (Armand) promised. Forget Violin (1997). This is Rice in top romantic form, despite a slippery page here and there."

Although Rice bid goodbye to the vampire Lestat in Memnoch the Devil, her fifth novel in The Vampire Chronicles, she has not abandoned vampires altogether. Two installments are planned this year in her New Tales of the Vampires series, and in the first of these, the ancient vampire Pandora tells her story. Urged on by David Talbot--fledgling vampire, self-appointed chronicler and former psychic detective--Pandora documents in sophisticated detail her pre-vampire existence as the privileged daughter of a Roman senator. She's a curious character, first introduced in The Queen of the Damned, in which Marius described her as the Greek courtesan who seduced him into making her a vampire and helped him care for the vampire progenitors until strife forced them apart. Here, Pandora herself sets the record straight. Born early in Augustus's reign, the educated, spirited Pandora was no courtesan--though we do see her challenge the sexual mores of her moment. When Tiberius brings chaos to Rome, and dishonor and death to Pandora's family, she goes to Antioch and tries to solve the mystery of her compelling blood dreams about Egypt. There, she reunites with her childhood crush, Marius, and learns from him what it means to be a vampire. Along the way, we find little of Rice's trademark eroticism, but Pandora has long been one of her more elusive characters, so fans will relish this vivid rendering of her life and times. Random House audio.(Mar.)