I am reading it right now, and so far, I am completely underwhelmed. I checked this out from my local library thinking, “Hey, an Ann Rice novel - she’s usually a pretty fun read. After all, I enjoyed Interview with the Vampire and The Vampire Lestat.” Hah! This book is the biggest piece of crap ever. Not only do we have a vampire with an evil spirit twin who is trying to take over, said vampire was created by another vampire who happens to be a hermaphrodite from ancient Pompeii.
The protagonist is a mealymouthed shit who no only bursts into tears at every available moment, but falls in love and sleeps with basically anybody who crosses his path.
Has anyone here ever read this book, and does it have any redeeming value whatsoever??
Its by no means as good as some of her other Vampire books, but I liked it. i usually like most of her vampire books though. I think half the reason I liked Blackwood Farm though was because I had read Blood Canticle first, which is the book that follows on from BF. BC hinted at and played around a lot of what happened in BF, so I enjoyed it purely because it help to make more sense of BC.
Well, I have to agree with you to a degree. I thought it was the worst Anne Rice novel I’ve ever read; however the story was at times rather interesting so I had to finish it naturally.
I didn’t feel any sympathy whatsoever with the whiny main character though; that’s the main flaw of the book I guess. Further I didn’t like Rice’s writing at times. The ending was kinda rushed too. But overall it wasn’t a complete waste of time.
I will take a break from Anne Rice before reading Blood Canticle - which I’ve heard is not much better, but I need to get closure from all these vampires, I guess…
I think I was disappointed, not only because of the main character, but because I had anticipated that the Mayfair witches would play even more of a role in the book. Also, sometimes it was hard to plow through the tangents Quinn would go on to get back to the story.
Thanks for your opinions, Delly and RealTronic. I think I’ll take a break, too, before reading Blood Canticle. I’m glad to hear that it clears up a bit of Blackwood Farm. Plus, since I’ve gotten this far, I have to read the last one, right?
I liked it, but not as much as the pre-Memnoch books. Granted, my opinion may be skewed because I had been reading some of Rice’s crappier vampire books (Blood and Gold anyone?) before I got to Blackwood and it could be that Quinn looked good in comparison to some of that other crap.
I will say, though, spare yourself the torture of Blood Canticle. To paraphrase Mike Nelson, “If ever there was a book I wanted to put into a stump grinder, this is the one.” Everything you hate about Blackwood is magnified eight thousand times in Crap Canticle. Also, Lestat and Mona are horribly mischaracterized and Annie-girl is off on a HUGE Catholic guilt trip. Run head-first into a wall a couple of times and you’ll have approximated the Crap Canticle experience.
:eek: You think Blood and Gold is one of Anne Rice’s worst Vampire novels?! Im shocked, I loved that book, granted its been a few years since I read it, but the first time I ever heard of the Vampire Marius I just had to know who he was and what his story was…
If I remember rightly, Blood Canticle has a lot more to do with the Mayfair clan that Blackwood farm does, itsnot a bad book really.
But then again, I liked Blood & Gold, so what does that say? lol
Anne Rice has lost it with the latter Vampire Books. I thought “Memnoch the Devil” was horrid, and the rest since then have been mediocre at best. She has turned a bewitching series into pulp fiction.
Now on the other hand, I want her to write a damn sequal to “The Mummy or Rameses The Damned”. I have been waiting forever for that.
My problem with Blood & Gold was that Marius moaned constantly for two hundred pages about his inability to keep a relationship. The abridged story in The Vampire Lestat was much better than his “oh, Pandora left me and I’ll spend the rest of eternity trying to replace her” snorefest.
The thing that got me about Blood Canticle was that Lestat’s character was almost, but not quite, completely different. All that whining about wanting to be a saint…wasn’t he the one who told Louis to stop whining?
I realize upon rereading my last post that I used the word “crap” four times. Last time I watch StrongBad before heading to the boards.
I felt the same thing about that book. I have one of the first paperback editions, and in the back, it says something along the lines of “The Mummy Chronicles will continue,” blah blah blah. I guess she ran out of material, though, because every edition after that did not include that note, and she never wrote another one. However, if her writing is going to be the same for any future Mummy books as it is for her current Vampire Chronicles, I’d rather she just didn’t bother.
I hope that’s not true. It would be a cryin’ shame to see such a great series go out on such a pathetic whimper. Not to mention she left room for a couple more sequels at the end of Blood Canticle that might go in interesting directions. I won’t mention them here because I forgot the tags for spoilers, but there was one that I was really interested in seeing.
Count me as another one who would be disappointed if there were no more novels in the Vampire chronicles. Even the stories not related to Lestat & Co. are a good read.
