What do you think?
Rate this book
Vampire: The Requiem #3
Marriage of Virtue and Viciousness
Vengeance Is His
Word has spread among Chicago's Kindred that Prince Maxwell is to grant an indulgence, a one-night lift on the ban imposed on destroying fellow vampires. The Damned scurry for position and ready their long-delayed revenge. But no vampire's rage is more consuming than that of Solomon Birch, the fallen zealot of the undead church known as the Lancea Sanctum. Birch's enemies know that if they don't strike first, he surely will.
The Requiem Novel #3
About the Greg Stolze is the author of A Hunger Like Fire (the first in this series), 2003's Trilogy of the Fallen and Rites of the Dragon. His short fiction has appeared in several anthologies and magazines.
Word has spread among Chicago's Kindred that Prince Maxwell is to grant an indulgence, a one-night lift on the ban imposed on destroying fellow vampires. The Damned scurry for position and ready their long-delayed revenge. But no vampire's rage is more consuming than that of Solomon Birch, the fallen zealot of the undead church known as the Lancea Sanctum. Birch's enemies know that if they don't strike first, he surely will.
The Requiem Novel #3
About the Greg Stolze is the author of A Hunger Like Fire (the first in this series), 2003's Trilogy of the Fallen and Rites of the Dragon. His short fiction has appeared in several anthologies and magazines.
288 pages, Paperback
First published June 27, 2005
3 people are currently reading
70 people want to read
About the author
Greg Stolze
146 books58 followersGreg Stolze (born 1970) is an American novelist and writer, whose work has mainly focused on properties derived from role-playing games.
Stolze has contributed to numerous role-playing game books for White Wolf Game Studio and Atlas Games, including Demon: the Fallen. Some of Stolze's recent work has been self-published using the "ransom method", whereby the game is only released when enough potential buyers have contributed enough money to reach a threshold set by the author.
Together with John Tynes he created and wrote the role-playing game Unknown Armies, published by Atlas Games. He has also co-written the free game NEMESIS, which uses the One-Roll Engine presented in Godlike and the so called Madness Meter derived from Unknown Armies.
Stolze has contributed to numerous role-playing game books for White Wolf Game Studio and Atlas Games, including Demon: the Fallen. Some of Stolze's recent work has been self-published using the "ransom method", whereby the game is only released when enough potential buyers have contributed enough money to reach a threshold set by the author.
Together with John Tynes he created and wrote the role-playing game Unknown Armies, published by Atlas Games. He has also co-written the free game NEMESIS, which uses the One-Roll Engine presented in Godlike and the so called Madness Meter derived from Unknown Armies.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
May 25, 2014
Since I really enjoyed the first volume of Vampire The Requiem novels, I thought I would pick up the next one by Greg Stolze and read on. Since I skipped the second one, there could be a few characters introduced there and carried into this, but my impression is that the second book is pretty much on its own. With that said, I didn't enjoy Marriage of Virtue and Viciousness quite as much as I hoped. Where Blood In and Blood Out had excellent character depth and a strong plot, I thought this had a good plot and was lacking in character depth.
Essentially, the plot focuses on political struggle within the Lancea Sanctum which means Solomon Birch is one of the main characters this time around. He is a very good villain and quite evil. The most interesting characters and subplot is between Velvet, Steve, and Aurora which is basically a vampiric love triangle. Velvet (who is a vampire) seduced Steve who is a lonely and desperately bored school teacher and Aurora is a mortal vampire hunter trying to save Steve and kill Velvet for her own very valid reasons. These characters are fleshed out well and the subplot has the best twist of the book. The author tries to show some of the other political groups in Chicago, but they are not fleshed out and are difficult to relate to. So while there the overall plot is good and the subplot with Velvet, Steve, and Aurora is excellent, the other "diversions" to show other political groups in Chicago are not as interesting and you will almost want to skip through these sections to get to the better parts. While I enjoyed reading this, I would definitely say that Marriage of Virtue and Viciousness is for more diehard Vampire fans or someone who really enjoyed Blood In, Blood Out and doesn't mind reading one more book set in that world that is not quite as good.
Essentially, the plot focuses on political struggle within the Lancea Sanctum which means Solomon Birch is one of the main characters this time around. He is a very good villain and quite evil. The most interesting characters and subplot is between Velvet, Steve, and Aurora which is basically a vampiric love triangle. Velvet (who is a vampire) seduced Steve who is a lonely and desperately bored school teacher and Aurora is a mortal vampire hunter trying to save Steve and kill Velvet for her own very valid reasons. These characters are fleshed out well and the subplot has the best twist of the book. The author tries to show some of the other political groups in Chicago, but they are not fleshed out and are difficult to relate to. So while there the overall plot is good and the subplot with Velvet, Steve, and Aurora is excellent, the other "diversions" to show other political groups in Chicago are not as interesting and you will almost want to skip through these sections to get to the better parts. While I enjoyed reading this, I would definitely say that Marriage of Virtue and Viciousness is for more diehard Vampire fans or someone who really enjoyed Blood In, Blood Out and doesn't mind reading one more book set in that world that is not quite as good.
December 30, 2015
Una muy buena novela y un gran libro para cualquier jugador o narrador de Vampiro, el Requiem. Personalmente me abrió la cabeza con respecto a como es el Lancea Sanctum.
Read
December 26, 2015I registered a book at BookCrossing.com!
http://www.BookCrossing.com/journal/12071566
http://www.BookCrossing.com/journal/12071566
October 31, 2014
Do not be fooled by the terrible cover art and the low production value. This is an incredible series. One of my favorite fantasy series.
November 18, 2021
3,5 stars. I found this book good but a bit disappointing. I had read the first volume written by this autor and it amazed me, not only the way it was written but the story as well. However, the second book was a bit "meh"... What I hated the most was the book adding real world drama and race-politics. The second book was really not my cup of tea. I thought it was because of the author (second book of the series is written by another person) so I thought the third one would be better. It was but still lagged a lot. The plot I like the most is the one between Steven-Aurora-Velvet and the plot twist of the trio by the end of the book.
The second story line... I cared little about, as I did not really fully understood the political aspects of it, as I am not well aware of how The Requiem system actually works (Im more familiar with V5 or even v20). Still enjoyable to read but I think the storyline was flawed. Too many characters to follow, and some only appear for a chapter or a scene and then vanish. I did not understood well what was the intention of showing those characters as what they did to me was irrelevant to the whole story. All those irrelevant characters made me remember very few of their names. Also the end was left in the end somehow with some plots still not fully resolved. I guess it was for a further book but I think there is no more VTM requiem books in the series (Let me know if there is).
However, as a whole, the series had characters on each of the books that do not appear in the other books or are barely mentioned. The only consistent character is Solomon Birch and the Prince (Maxwell). Those are the ones that appear in the whole series while Persephone the main character in the first book sortly appears in the second but not at all in the third. The Nosferatu of the first book also does not show up again in the entire series, and the Cartian leader protagonist of the second book is only mentioned in the third book. It would have been cool to know more about them throughout the series.
The second story line... I cared little about, as I did not really fully understood the political aspects of it, as I am not well aware of how The Requiem system actually works (Im more familiar with V5 or even v20). Still enjoyable to read but I think the storyline was flawed. Too many characters to follow, and some only appear for a chapter or a scene and then vanish. I did not understood well what was the intention of showing those characters as what they did to me was irrelevant to the whole story. All those irrelevant characters made me remember very few of their names. Also the end was left in the end somehow with some plots still not fully resolved. I guess it was for a further book but I think there is no more VTM requiem books in the series (Let me know if there is).
However, as a whole, the series had characters on each of the books that do not appear in the other books or are barely mentioned. The only consistent character is Solomon Birch and the Prince (Maxwell). Those are the ones that appear in the whole series while Persephone the main character in the first book sortly appears in the second but not at all in the third. The Nosferatu of the first book also does not show up again in the entire series, and the Cartian leader protagonist of the second book is only mentioned in the third book. It would have been cool to know more about them throughout the series.
May 31, 2021
This was another great book of Vampires. I wish I would've gotten into the World of Darkness books years ago. I want to read more of them. There are alot of intresting characters and stories.
April 21, 2017
Ah, I loved this book. It's hard to find a character that is so completely evil that you hate every aspect of him, yet somehow so utterly devastating that you love him in spite of all that. The endless political battle between Birch and Persephone, Birch's humanism (which is mostly just him looking to get what he can out of the people he covets as family), the inspired twist... I loved all of it. As far as vampire fiction goes, I would suggest all aficionados read this one.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews