Blackwood Farm

Unabridged
Author: Anne Rice
Narrator: Stephen Spinella
Genres: Fiction, iPod Audiobooks
Publisher: Random House (Audio)
Date: October 2002
Length: 21 hours
Ratings:
Formats:
  • iPod
Abridged
Author: Anne Rice
Narrator: Stephen Spinella
Genres: Fiction
Publisher: Random House (Audio)
Date: October 2002
Length: 6 hours
Ratings:
  • Book Rating: 3/5
Formats:
  • CD

Other Options

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Overview

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.

Selected Reviews

Tough to listen

by Anonymous
  • Book Rating: 1/5

Good Anne Rice Yarn

by Kirsten Mitchell
  • Book Rating: 3/5

More...

Read All 16

Reviews (16)

Tough to listen

Written by Anonymous on October 20th, 2008

  • Book Rating: 1/5

Tough to listen too. The drawl of the narrator was thick. Certain parts I couldn't tell who was talking. I've enjoyed reading Ann Rice novels in the past. This is the first audio book I tried. Slow start but Ok in the end.

Good Anne Rice Yarn

Written by Kirsten Mitchell on February 9th, 2008

  • Book Rating: 3/5

I suspect i would have liked the unabridged version more, because i kept feeling like i was missing something. The story was complex, erotic, and satisfying, in typical later Anne Rice fashion. As always, her characters are brilliant, and i love all the references to earlier works that make me feel like i'm getting to hang out with old friends again. The narration threw me off--the Louisiana Lowlands accents struck me as phoney and the women's voices didn't work at all. But all in all a very enjoyable experience for Anne Rice fans.

Blackwood Farm

Written by Anonymous on February 7th, 2008

  • Book Rating: 2/5

This was a very boring story. The reader just made is worse. I struggled to make it through even the beginning, thinking it would get better, but it never did.

Blackwood Farm

Written by Anonymous on November 26th, 2007

  • Book Rating: 3/5

I am a big fan of Anne Rice, and have read all of her books. Blackwood Farm was enjoyable only because I had read her previous books about the Vampires and the Mayfair Witches. Had I not read them, I would probably have not enjoyed Blackwood Farm very much - without the background from other books, this one would have been difficult to follow. I would suggest those who are new to Anne Rice, read some of her earlier books before choosing this one.

Blackwood Farm

Written by D Rieger on August 17th, 2007

  • Book Rating: 2/5

I have always enjoyed the writing of Anne Rice but I did not enjoy this story as much as I did the others. I also felt that the accent the reader used was distracting since it was so over the top.

Blackwood Farm

Written by Laurajean on June 6th, 2007

  • Book Rating: 4/5

I am a huge fan of Anne Rice and this book does not disappoint. I liked the narrator and thought he did an excellent job with the various voices. I also liked how Anne Rice tied the vampire chronicle in with the Mayfair witch stories. I highly recommend this book.

Blackwood Farm

Written by Christa Krais on April 24th, 2007

  • Book Rating: 3/5

I love Anne Rice's work and enjoyed Blackwood Farm because Tarquin is so innocent and because of the resurgence of Mona Mayfair. However, the reader's voice and accent are so incredibly GRATING, I couldn't finish the audio version. Instead, I stayed up late at night and finished the actual book version. I'm dying for Blood Canticle to arrive but am desperately afraid it will be the same reader! If you can, read the book instead. If not, it's a great story if you can get past the very bad performance.

Blackwood Farm

Written by Melissa Hauser on April 9th, 2007

  • Book Rating: 1/5

I didn't like the voice of the narrator at all. It was too much like a girl and made it hard for me to stay on the story. I don't think this was one of Anne Rice's best books by any means.

Hated it!

Written by Jessica Campbell-Smith from Palm City, FL on June 2nd, 2006

  • Book Rating: 1/5

Maybe it was the reader's voice. Most of the characters are read in the same bad southern accented female's voice. I didn't even realize the main character Quinn was a male at first. I am on the second disc and I am bored and slightly disgusted with Quinn. He's weird, I don't "get" him, I don't like him and I don't like the book. Sending it back without finishing it.

It passed the time

Written by Tami Whalen on December 26th, 2005

  • Book Rating: 3/5

Well it helped pass the time during my long commute, however, I don't think I would have finished it in hardcover. Story was okay but after all other Vampire Chronicles it was very predictable. I haven't read A. Rice for that reason in a long time, but once in a while a dose of Lestat is entertaining.

Selected Reviews

Tough to listen

by Anonymous
  • Book Rating: 1/5

Good Anne Rice Yarn

by Kirsten Mitchell
  • Book Rating: 3/5

More...

Read All 16

Author Details

Author Details

Rice, Anne

Born Howard Allen O'Brien on October 4, 1941 in New Orleans, Louisiana. Named after her father, Anne changed her first name in 1947 on her first day of school. She studied at Texas Women's University (1959Ð60), San Francisco State College (1964 BA; 1971 MA), and at the University of California, Berkeley (1969Ð70). After a variety of jobs, including waitress, cook, and insurance claims examiner, she began her career as a writer of erotica and vampire novels.

Rice gained a vast cult readership for her supernatural novels. Her first, Interview with the Vampire, was published in 1976. The book was the first in her popular Vampire Chronicles series, which includes 1985's The Vampire Lestat and 1988's The Queen of the Damned. Interview with the Vampire was made into a film in 1996 starring Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt. Rice was also known for her sadomasochistic erotica, including Beauty's Punishment (1984). Later novels include Servant of the Bones (1996) and Vittorio the Vampire (1999). She also writes mainstream fiction using the pen name of Anne Rampling.

Much to the chagrin of her fans, Rice renounced her vampire novels after her return to the Catholic faith in 1998. It was then that she published Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt, her first novel in a trilogy chronicling the life of Jesus. She has since left New Orleans to live in Southern California in an effort to escape her fame as a novelist and live a simpler life.

Rice was married to poet Stan Rice for 41 years until his death in 2002. Their daughter, Michele, was born in 1966 and died of leukemia in 1972 at the age of five. Their son, Christopher, was born in 1978 and is a novelist.