Blackwood Farm (The Vampire Chronicles)
Average Rating: 3.5 Stars
by Anne Rice
List Price: $7.99
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Binding: Mass Market Paperback
Publisher: Ballantine Books
ISBN: 0345443683
Amazon.com Review
In the past few years, many fans have sworn off Anne Rice, flinging her later novels against the wall with cries of "First draft!" and "Never again!" But these same fans may want to take a chance on her Southern gothic Blackwood Farm, a fast-paced and erotically charged, though uneven, novel of the Vampire Chronicles. Blackwood Farm has an unusual flaw: it isn't long enough. Many of its triumphs and tragedies demand more development than they receive. Motivations are sometimes unlikely or unexplained, and the ending is far too rushed.
Blackwood Farm introduces Quinn Blackwood, the sexy, eccentric young gentleman who becomes both a vampire and the heir to the Blackwood estate. All his life, Quinn has been haunted by Goblin, a doppelgänger no one else can see--or believe in. But Goblin is real, and he is becoming maliciously tangible, strengthened by the blood that Quinn unwillingly drinks. Quinn's only hope of liberation from his increasingly dangerous doppelgänger is to find the legendary vampire Lestat. But Lestat has vowed to destroy any vampire who sets foot in New Orleans....
Blackwood Farm features characters from both the Vampire Chronicles and the Mayfair Witches series, but this self-contained novel makes a good entry point for newcomers to Anne Rice's fictional world (however, Vampire Chronicle virgins really should start with Interview With the Vampire, the first in the series and arguably the finest vampire novel of the 20th century). --Cynthia Ward
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Product Description
In her new novel, perennial bestseller Anne Rice fuses her two uniquely seductive strains of narrative -- her Vampire legend and her lore of the Mayfair witches -- to give us a world of classic deep-south luxury and ancestral secrets.
Welcome to Blackwood Farm: soaring white columns, spacious drawing rooms, bright, sun-drenched gardens, and a dark strip of the dense Sugar Devil Swamp. This is the world of Quinn Blackwood, a brilliant young man haunted since birth by a mysterious doppelgänger, “Goblin,” a spirit from a dream world that Quinn can’t escape and that prevents him from belonging anywhere. When Quinn is made a Vampire, losing all that is rightfully his and gaining an unwanted immortality, his doppelgänger becomes even more vampiric and terrifying than Quinn himself.
As the novel moves backwards and forwards in time, from Quinn’s boyhood on Blackwood Farm to present day New Orleans, from ancient Athens to 19th-century Naples, Quinn seeks out the legendary Vampire Lestat in the hope of freeing himself from the spectre that draws him inexorably back to Sugar Devil Swamp and the explosive secrets it holds.
A story of youth and promise, of loss and the search for love, of secrets and destiny, Blackwood Farm is Anne Rice at her mesmerizing best.
From the Hardcover edition.
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Customer Reviews
What kind of LeStat is this???
3 Stars
The book starts off great. LeStat is himself, as in dangerous, cunning and in charge. Then we get the story of Quinn. Now I have to admit the whole story of the Blackwood family is very interesting. Perhaps it should have been a book about a haunted family only. Not a vampire book. The vampire part of the book is weak and LeStat just becomes an accessory. This is the boring part and the ending... where is Louis to help? He loves Merrick, does he not? I had hoped we'd see dangerous LeStat. Nope. It's a worthy read, just to read about the Blackwood family, but the vampire stuff is just fluff around the edges of a haunted family story.
~ Jaga,
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Blackwood Farm
4 Stars
Beautifully written. Includes a few favorites from the Mayfair family which I really enjoyed.
~ Becca.B, Steveson,al USA
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Powerful concept, but the stage machinery is showing
3 Stars
Some years ago I read "The Vampire Lestat" and was swept up in its bizarre but richly imagined world. Then I read one or two of her other books and found them less satisfying. Now here is "Blackwood Farm" and suddenly I have the sense of seeing the wizard behind the curtain, and it's a disappointing experience.
I hadn't realized that her target audience is basically that of National Enquirer. All the infinitely wealthy characters who populate her pages are the lottery-winning daydreams of her impoverished readership. Impoverished, too, in more ways than one, because she encourages them to dream that with the money will somehow come "culture" and "class." References to the fine arts are - artfully? sorry! - sprinkled through the pages, but not in any way that suggests any serious engagement. So "Hamlet" is introduced only by the Kenneth Branagh film: a few other Shakespeare plays are mentioned but by title only. There's a refreshingly honest remark that "I couldn't remember what I read of "Paradise Lost," no matter how hard I tried" - hah! A Rice experience here, perhaps. The central figure, Tarquin Blackwood, is taken on a 21st century version of the "Grand Tour" of Europe, but we hear nothing of what he saw except the ruins of Pompeii.
It's all painless "culture lite" like the woman who "plays the piano exquisitely" and speaks several languages. Which languages? And what does she play" Oh, never mind, the only other role played by music is the sister who plays "in a band." Forget Mozart. But the ultimate in crass vulgarity comes when the aged aunt (of whom more anon) sets herself up as the "finishing school" for some young thing and this turns out to mean that she teaches...the care of nails and hair! And there are some surprising slips for someone who is in many ways an accomplished writer. "Chaise lounge," indeed! And "sherbert" for "sherbet." And the thousand dollar bills!And check to the queen in chess (yes, I know it used to be a concept long ago).
Another ignorance is where a young fellow is, with no preparation, sent to "a boarding school in England, Eton, no less" - no concept of hard it is to get into Eton! Even the nobility used put their sons down at birth for Eton, just to stand a chance - now you have to apply by age 10, three years before possible entry. And even then you're more likely to end up at Harrow. But who cares about details when one is talking about Britain, in Rice's books just the home of all that is dignified.
Part of Rice's appeal has always been the hint of sexual variations (the ambiguity of "Petronia" in this book, for instance) but she takes it to, as far as I know, a new level with "Aunt Queen." This is an old lady always wrapped up in feathery things, with "her face warm and pretty, for all her years." She has a "sweet femininity." But she always wears - glamorous stiletto heels! There's a coarse slang name for those that many of Rice's readers undoubtedly know.
So - I seem to have heaped scorn on this book. Yet - I give it three stars. Why? Because behind the false front that pulls in the rubes, there is a powerful imagination at work, and a not inconsiderable skill at storytelling. Many have found it somewhat slow going, and so did I, until the amazing closing chapters. It's when she gets into the vampiric heart of the tale that her writing really comes alive, and the revelation about Goblin's origin is quite stunning. Yes, it's worth a read.
~ John Bonavia, Needham, MA USA
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