The Witching Hour (Lives of the Mayfair Witches)

Nobody can handle generations of horror like Anne Rice. The Witching Hour takes you through centuries of witchery and for the entire trip, you'll feel like somebody is standing behind you. Romantic and unsettling, it's a meaty volume you'll fly through and then wish you hadn't finished so quickly. Excellent reading if you plan to be in N'Orleans any time soon.
-- Mark LaFlamme, author of "The Pink Room."

This is by far one of the finest books I've read -- one that gets better with each reading.

Within a crumbling mansion in New Orleans' Garden District, a woman sits on a rocker, drugged into a vegetative state by her relatives. As a part of the Mayfair family -- one of the oldest and most wealthy in New Orleans -- she's perpetually haunted by a man with long brown hair; a man who may or may not be human...

Meanwhile in San Francisco, Michael Curry has developed a debilitating psychic ability that forces him into hiding within his own home. Having been rescued by Dr. Rowan Mayfair (also of the Mayfair family, though she doesn't know it) he finally makes the decision to journey back to New Orleans -- the city of his birth -- and rediscover the memories he's so sorely missed.

Paths collide when both Curry and Mayfair arrive in New Orleans, discovering the true nature of Deidre and the Mayfair family while falling deeply in love with each other. For you see, the Mayfair family are a family of witches, cursed for centuries by a being that brought them both wealth and pain, ecstasy and sorrow. This is the being that haunts Deidre as she sits in her rocker, and awaits the arrival of the Doctor from San Francisco who will allow him to enter our world permanently.

Rice's writing was so evocative I could practically feel myself within the crumbling sidewalks and gigantic mansions, despite never having traveled to the South. Character development is first rate, with the many relatives of the Mayfair clan being given distinct personalities all their own. Of course, one cannot ignore the blood and sex either -- both highly engrossing.

You won't find a better witchcraft saga than this; and to make matters ever better, the story doesn't end on the last page!

Pretty fanciful, but a good read. So good that I am going on to read Lasher and looking forward to Taltos, the next books in the series. One thing I would have liked would have been a diagram of the 'family tree' - it gets pretty convoluted. But that, in itself, is an integral part of the story.

I haven't actually read the "whole" thing; I got to page 8?? and had so many other books I was just dying to read, I thought I'd get back to this one later. I forgot what page I was on, so now I have to start over; it's difficult, but I don't mind. The writing style is beautiful, rythmic, and the images that come to mind based on her descriptions of X are equally so...this could make a good film, but not a film worth watching, since you'd NEVER finish FILMING it! So much is in this book, a screenwriter alone would probably take 25+ years transferring it into a script; and movies are tangable anyway; the imagination is free-flowing, multi-layered and full of change and surprise...personally, I think this is one of the best books ever written; it's not socially conscious like earleir books b4 it's time, but it's still entertaining as Hlle!!! If you don't try to rush through it, it's a worthy-purchase, considering it's over 1,000 pages! Sometimes long books are a bad thing, but not when Anne Rice is giving it!

This is definatly a good book. Anne Rice is a good writer and you can see it in this book. She twists a good storyline with enough forbiden love and money to keep you hanging. I can not wait to read Lasher and Taltos.