Rating: 
Summary: Too many misses and not enough hits. Rice strike out, again.
Review: With the possible exception of "Merrick", "Blackwood Farm" is perhaps the worst book Rice has written in years. Just when I thought I had seen the last of the excruciatingly boring Mayfair clan, they reappear in this cast of new duds, the Blackwoods. Most notably, one Tarquin Blackwood and the idiotic "Goblin". Quinn is the most inane caricature of a teenager ever written. Anne needs to take some lessons from Greg Berlanti if she hopes to bring this type of protagonist to life. She has failed miserably and only succeeds in irritating the reader beyond words. How the character Lestat could become interested in Quinn is beyond reason. He should have saved the world the misery of this book by offing the fledgling Quinn at the outset.
Rating:
Summary: So much talent so much waste.
Review: Many people have written why this book is so bad. I agree with almost all of them! So I won't repeat their more eloquent critiques.Instead, I would like to discuss her writing style in general. She should be proud of her wonderful ideas, of making vampires so accessible. Her vampire characters have depth and evoke empathy from the reader. This is her hallmark, for certain. She also has wonderful storyline ideas. Then she kills it! She hints at so many things and then stops. I would like to see more homoerotic action and less 'outsiders'. Personally, I think all the witch books are monotonous and anti-erotic disasters, filled with boring family trees of people usually only mentioned briefly. Their ridiculous and gauche behaviour, instead of serving as an effective contrast to her elegant and sensuous vampires, only serves to break the spell. And that is my biggest complaint. She begins to weave the most glorious spells with her wonderful descriptions and beginnings of dialogue. Then, all of a sudden it's all gone. Instead of the scenes playing out, she is introducing characters and turn of events that are as annoying as tv commercials during a great scene. Her best book, by far is "Cry to Heaven" I wish someone who is close to her, who she would listen to, would show her where her true gifts are and where she is straying. I bet she could write one hot D/s man2man book, with the right editor! That scene with Marius and Armand proves it.
Rating:
Summary: Dreadful
Review: My god, this book may never end. Dante could have had a whole circle of hell involving the reading of this book. 400 pages of monologue to tell the story of a whiny, boring hero who speaks, unaccountably, in purple, vaguely 19th-century Byronic language, the very worst of Rice's already tired breed of laconic, manic-depressive, wealthy, beautiful, bisexual, angst-ridden vampires. She really needs to start a new series. She's made enough money off of these silly wretches, make up something else and stop ruining what had been, for quite a few years, a good series of books. and for god's sake, what's with the odd racism in this one? when the "hero" decides he wants to bed one of his black employees -- gosh, that's his right, isn't it? -- the silver-tongued devil says to her, "Be my chocolate candy. I'm real unsure of my masculinity." How could a girl resist, I ask you! He also calls her "milk chocolate." An 18 year old saying this to a 35 year old woman would get away with a broken nose at minimum. Instead she says to him at one point, "Once you go black, you never go back!" Anne Rice has apparently been watching too many 1970s movies. By all means, skip this one.
Rating:
Summary: BORING
Review: I really can't describe it any other way. Believe it or not, I am a big Anne Rice fan. The truth is this book is boring. My hope is that perhaps......it's the setting for the next book which will be absolutely FABULOUS....my fingers are crossed.
Rating:
Summary: Vampire lore meets Dawsons Creek
Review: I must say, I waited with real hope for this book. I actually kept track of the days, awaiting the time it would hit the shelves. I was thrilled to find out that Mona Mayfair would be back in Ms. Rice's writting. Alas, what I got was this melodramatic soap opera while Ms. Rice continues to assasinate the charecters she so lovingly created. What happened to Mona? No longer is she the sweet, intellegent young girl she was when we last saw her. Now in her place is an airhead who's apparently got some life-threatening disease as result of to much Mayfair imbreeding. And Quinn is most certainly not main character material. He simply has no real interesting qualities. He collects cameos and likes clothes. This is what we are treated to: 400 pages of Quinn talking about cameos and clothes, how much he loves Mona and Lestat, and how horrible his family life has been. The whole Goblin plotline is actually treated more as a subplot and is to easily explained away in the last couple pages. After forcing myself to pick the book back up after about 3 months of setting it aside (okay, throwing it at the wall in disgust) I did find one redeeming quality: Merrick, the charecter Anne NEVER should have made a vampire dies but even this is a somewhat a unsatisfying end as her death is somewhat to hard follow. I would not suggest buying this book under and circumstances. Borrow it from the library or if you simply have to add it to your Anne Rice collection, wait until paperback. It's not worth the hardback price.
Rating:
Summary: worst. book. ever.
Review: What an awful book! (Having said that, I did actually read the entire thing.) Irritatingly, most of the book is a monologue, spoken by Tarquin (yet another impossibly rich, overdressed, beautiful and campy vampire) to Lestat, who doesn't even chime in with an 'mmm' or 'ok' or 'by the gods, you're an insufferably boring lad'. This struck me as very un-Lestat, and a dialogue with Lestat would have at least broken up this hefty monologue. The entire book is strangely written. The words and phrases are different from her previous works. The tenses and writing style is a departure from the tried and true method and I couldn't help but wonder if this was even written by Anne Rice. Maybe it was, but she had a 4 year old for an editor. Whatever, this book was a sore disappointment to me, and I'm sad that I spent $50AU buying the hardcover. You owe me some cash, Anne Rice.
Rating: 
Summary: Anne Rice's best work yet!
Review: The story was enthralling from the first page to very last. I couldn't put the book down until I finished reading the whole thing. This is Anne Rice's best book yet. I can't wait until the next one.
Rating: 
Summary: Great book yet to short were it counts
Review: I just got done reading Black Wood Farms and my opinions on it are mixed I thought at the begining of the book it was to long but mid book it started to get really to the point were I couldnt put it down yet I felt that the end was to short and hope there is another installment on this character. This book has alot of symbolic accurences that were suddel(very) yet made the book all the better. All in all I give this book a 3.5 and recommend it
Rating:
Summary: Oh Anne, please return to your glory
Review: First things first, this book was waaay too short (like by 1/2!) I felt like the entire thing was on fast forward and that she was just going through the motions. The characters were, or rather could be, interesting and the story line need a lot of meat. Witching Hour fans will be glad to see more Mayfair madness in this one, and we finally get somewhere with the Talamasca debacle but past that, not much happens. The book was formulaic and forced at times, she was telling a lot more than showing and Quinn is a hard character to swallow. But this is a common problem with her younger characters, they lack youth, and therefore are unconvincing. Petronia is a really intriguing character though, and I wish that there had been more attention upon "it". Overall though, its Rice, and even at her worst she would still be one of the most talented writers out there today, so read the book and love it, but see that it is a shadow of what it could have been.
Rating:
Summary: Rice is back
Review: I was delighted with this book. It was vintage "Rice". She is back! I was pleased to see some of our old friends again especially the Mayfair family and of course our old friend Lestat. This was so much better than her last couple of books. I am anxious to see where "Quinn and Rowan" go from here. I finished the book yesterday and hated that it was over.
Great book.
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