The ninth volume of "The Vampire Chronicles" by Anne Rice I'm holding in my hands. Published half a year ago "Blackwood Farm" was praised beforehand as the horror queen's new masterpiece. Fresh and fascinating it was called, which led to high hopes, because the last volumes in the Chronicles, "Merrick" and "Blood and Gold", lacked both storyline and interesting characters.

However, thinking Anne Rice would come back to old form is in vain. We don't learn what happened to Louis after the last pages of "Merrick" were turned and we don't see brat prince Lestat in a leading role once more. Sure, he makes a wonderful appearance in the frame of the story, yet he seems to have become teethless through the last few years.

In "Merrick" he had made New Orleans his hunting ground and threatened to kill every intruding fledging. Now in "Blackwood Farm", Quinn Blackwood - vamipre greenhorn - dares to enter the city anyway. He has read all of Lestat's books and is well informed about the history of vampires. According to mythology the first vampire was "born" when a bloodthirsty ghost entered the body of a dying aegyptian pair. From then on, part of this ghost is preserved in every vampire. And exactly this mythology is Quinn's problem: Since his very childhood he has a doppelgänger, a ghost named Goblin. Since Quinn became a vampire also Goblin has changed. Every time after Quinn has fed, Goblin attacks him to get his share of the blood. And every time the ghost becomes stronger. What would happen if he was the source of a new race of vampires?

So he needs Lestat's help. He should know how to destroy Goblin and ban the danger. And Lestat happily takes the challenge. Instead of killing Quinn, he adopts him, entangles him in philosophical nonsense and befriends his old aunt Aunt Queen who he immediately finds "entrancing".

To explain Lestat every detail about the ghost, Quinn starts to tell the story of his life. First the history of the complete Blackwood family back to the ancestor Manfred Blackwood who built the manor in the swamps of Louisiana. Then forward to Aunt Queen and his upbringing up to the present day.

Little-Quinn grew up as the only child between adults. Therefore his invisible friend wasn't a surprise to the rest of the family. When growing up, also his invisible friend Goblin would vanish they thought ... just that he didn't. As the extremely rich heir of Blackwood Farm Quinn grows to be a self-centered, excentric yet terribly naive young man. He has never seen a public school from the inside (remember: excentric) and is educated by his family and some private teachers. The Grand Tour through Europe follows when he is eighteen and also in this age he falls in love with the young Mona Mayfair, though one day before he still thought he was gay. The romantic that he his, he pleads with Mona to marry him not spending a second thought on homosexuality (though he already played some nasty sex games with ghost Goblin in the shower).