Enter vampire: Quinn starts to explore the family secret which is an old house on Sugar Devil Island. Visiting the house he finds read paperbacks, ashes in the fireplace and - who would have thought - a golden crypt in the garden. Who has ever only heard of the name Anne Rice will know what Quinn still has to learn the hard way: Sugar Devil Island is the home of a bloodsucking fiend.

Petronia, fitting the Ricean rolemodel for vampires perfectly, takes an interest in Young Blackwood and starts spying on him, threatening him and playing with his fears. What happens next is no surprise: After some to and fro she makes him a vampire.

After Quinn's detailed biography the last fifty pages describe the mystery evolving around Goblin, the quest to destroy him and on the last page Mona Mayfair is healed from a strange illness. Where Rice describes every detail concerning Quinns life the real action is written plainly like a task that has to be done. The much more exciting story of Lestat, Goblin and Quinn is brought to an end in the minimum of possibly used pages.

"Blood refreshed for Rice" (Denver Post) or "a completely fresh story" (Booklist) enthused the press. And it's true: "Blackwood Farm" is for many reasons much more entertaining than the former two volumes. When Anne Rice excursed into unknown jungles ("Merrick") or traveled to ancient Rome ("Blood and Gold"), she now luckily realized that her writing is most powerful when she stays with what she knows. As a resident of New Orleans her descriptions of the city and the surrounding landscapes are so vivid that even a reader who has never seen these places (like me) feels kidnapped and put down in a swarming swamp. Not by incident the title of the novel is "Blackwood Farm" - the house plays a major part in the story, it is a living being. Anne Rice's talent instantly lessens when she leaves known ground. Descriptions of Italy or even New York sound like copied from a tourist guide.

Another advantage is the fact that this time the whole story takes place in present day. This makes it possible to take another try at a crossover with the "Mayfair Witches". When this sounded forced and not determined by the story in "Merrick" it makes perfect sense in "Blackwood Farm".

Yet, "Blackwood Farm" doesn't reach the quality of her very first novels, namely "Interview with the Vampire" and "The Vampire Lestat". In the last years she went to producing mere vampire-biographies that all worked with one writing scheme: Take a frame where you put two vampires at a table and force one to tell the story of his life. Then shush the other one till the first one is done talking (this takes about 300 to 400 pages). Then, on the last 50 or so pages, bring the frame to an end. Also important: Never, and I say n e v e r, connect two following novels plotwise. This also applies to "Blackwood Farm" and many a Rice-reader will soon find the mere technique tiresome.