The Witching Hour (Lives of the Mayfair Witches #1). Anne Rice. Alfred A. Knopf. 1990. 965 pages (Source: Kindle Library)
First sentence: The doctor woke up afraid.
Plot: On the veranda of a great New Orleans house, now faded, a mute and fragile woman sits rocking... and The Witching Hour begins.
It begins in our time with a rescue at sea. Rowan Mayfair, a beautiful woman, a brilliant practitioner of neurosurgery - aware that she has special powers but unaware that she comes from an ancient line of witches - finds the drowned body of a man off the coast of California and brings him to life. He is Michael Curry, who was born in New Orleans and orphaned in childhood by fire on Christmas Eve, who pulled himself up from poverty, and who now, in his brief interval of death, has acquired a sensory power that mystifies and frightens him.
As these two, fiercely drawn to each other, fall in love and - in passionate alliance - set out to solve the mystery of her past and his unwelcome gift, the novel moves backward and forward in time from today's New Orleans and San Francisco to long ago Amsterdam and a chateau in the France of Louis XIV. An intricate tale of evil unfolds - an evil unleashed in seventeenth-century Scotland, where the first "witch", Suzanne of the Mayfair, conjures up the spirit she names Lasher... a creation that spells her own destruction and torments each of her descendants in turn.
From the coffee plantation of Port au Prince, where the great Mayfair fortune is made and the legacy of their dark power is almost destroyed, to Civil War New Orleans, as Julien - the clan's only male to be endowed with occult powers - provides for the dynasty its foothold in America, the dark, luminous story encompasses dramas of seduction and death, episodes of tenderness and healing. And always - through peril and escape, tension and release - there swirl around us the echoes of eternal war: innocence versus the corruption of the spirit, sanity against madness, life against death. With a dreamlike power, the novel draws us, through circuitous, twilight paths, to the present and Rowan's increasingly inspired and risky moves in the merciless game that binds her to her heritage. And in New Orleans, on Christmas Eve, this strangest of family sagas is brought to its startling climax.
My thoughts: Though this books genre is horror, it's not really a horror story. It is the classic good versus evil. I am a huge fan of anything New Orleans though I have never been there and the bulk of this story is in New Orleans.
There is a secret organization called the Talamasca that has been around as long as the witches and they have documented from afar the lives of each generation of the Mayfair witches. A couple times the current member in charge of the Mayfair files made contact with the witch of their time or the family it ended badly... with death. The bulk of the story is actually a person in present times reading the entries on the Mayfair witches in order to help the current unaware witch whom he loves. Yes, a love story too!
The current witch, Rowan Mayfair, was adopted out to a family member to be kept away from the home where the spirit Lasher resided with Rowan's mother. When her mother died Lasher appeared to Rowan. Rowan discovers where she is from and heads back to learn more of her family and history. She reads the files and decides it's time to make a change. Lasher is going to face a battle. Rowan is a very strong witch and very determined to end this cycle with the aide of her lover and future husband Michael Curry. But a twist towards the end... she must fight this battle to save those whom she loves from harm at the hand of Lasher.
It's been a suspensful read and yes, there is a sequel...
It begins in our time with a rescue at sea. Rowan Mayfair, a beautiful woman, a brilliant practitioner of neurosurgery - aware that she has special powers but unaware that she comes from an ancient line of witches - finds the drowned body of a man off the coast of California and brings him to life. He is Michael Curry, who was born in New Orleans and orphaned in childhood by fire on Christmas Eve, who pulled himself up from poverty, and who now, in his brief interval of death, has acquired a sensory power that mystifies and frightens him.
As these two, fiercely drawn to each other, fall in love and - in passionate alliance - set out to solve the mystery of her past and his unwelcome gift, the novel moves backward and forward in time from today's New Orleans and San Francisco to long ago Amsterdam and a chateau in the France of Louis XIV. An intricate tale of evil unfolds - an evil unleashed in seventeenth-century Scotland, where the first "witch", Suzanne of the Mayfair, conjures up the spirit she names Lasher... a creation that spells her own destruction and torments each of her descendants in turn.
From the coffee plantation of Port au Prince, where the great Mayfair fortune is made and the legacy of their dark power is almost destroyed, to Civil War New Orleans, as Julien - the clan's only male to be endowed with occult powers - provides for the dynasty its foothold in America, the dark, luminous story encompasses dramas of seduction and death, episodes of tenderness and healing. And always - through peril and escape, tension and release - there swirl around us the echoes of eternal war: innocence versus the corruption of the spirit, sanity against madness, life against death. With a dreamlike power, the novel draws us, through circuitous, twilight paths, to the present and Rowan's increasingly inspired and risky moves in the merciless game that binds her to her heritage. And in New Orleans, on Christmas Eve, this strangest of family sagas is brought to its startling climax.
My thoughts: Though this books genre is horror, it's not really a horror story. It is the classic good versus evil. I am a huge fan of anything New Orleans though I have never been there and the bulk of this story is in New Orleans.
There is a secret organization called the Talamasca that has been around as long as the witches and they have documented from afar the lives of each generation of the Mayfair witches. A couple times the current member in charge of the Mayfair files made contact with the witch of their time or the family it ended badly... with death. The bulk of the story is actually a person in present times reading the entries on the Mayfair witches in order to help the current unaware witch whom he loves. Yes, a love story too!
The current witch, Rowan Mayfair, was adopted out to a family member to be kept away from the home where the spirit Lasher resided with Rowan's mother. When her mother died Lasher appeared to Rowan. Rowan discovers where she is from and heads back to learn more of her family and history. She reads the files and decides it's time to make a change. Lasher is going to face a battle. Rowan is a very strong witch and very determined to end this cycle with the aide of her lover and future husband Michael Curry. But a twist towards the end... she must fight this battle to save those whom she loves from harm at the hand of Lasher.
It's been a suspensful read and yes, there is a sequel...
