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| The Witching Hour | 
| Author: Anne Rice
Publisher: Alfred A. Knopf
Category: Book
List Price: $35.00
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Avg. Customer Rating:  375 reviews
Sales Rank: 230629
Media: Hardcover
Edition: 1st
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 976
Shipping Weight (lbs): 2.9
Dimensions (in): 9.6 x 6.4 x 1.9
ISBN: 0394587863
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN: 9780394587868
ASIN: 0394587863
Publication Date: October 16, 1990
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: Dust Cover Missing. Millions of satisfied customers and climbing. Thriftbooks is the name you can trust, guaranteed. Spend Less. Read More.
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Amazon.com Review
In this engrossing and hypnotic tale of witchcraft and the occult spanning four centuries, we meet a great dynasty of witches--a family given to poetry and incest, to murder and philosophy, a family that over the ages is haunted by a powerful, dangerous and seductive being.
Product Description
From the author of the extraordinary Vampire Chronicles comes a huge, hypnotic novel of witchcraft and the occult through four centuries.
Demonstrating, once again, her gift for spellbinding storytelling and the creation of legend, Anne Rice makes real for us a great dynasty of witches--a family given to poetry and to incest, to murder and to philosophy; a family that, over the ages, is itself haunted by a powerful, dangerous, and seductive being.
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 plantations 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.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 370 more reviews...
 a disjointed, rambling mess November 19, 2008
I have a love/hate relationship with Anne Rice's books. This one falls into the latter category.
Where to begin? Well, to start with, it took me over a week to read. Granted, it's over 1000 pages long, but that normally doesn't happen. It should have taken 3 days, maybe 4. Too bad I'm unable to put a book down once I've started reading it.
It's the start of the Witches of Mayfair series, about a family of witches, and the main story, to the extent there is one, is about the most recent descendant coming into her inheritance, but it's nothing as straightforward as that. Not even close.
I'll try to synopsize. Rowan Mayfair is a brilliant neurosurgeon, with a magic sense that, combined with her medical experience, allows her to know which seemingly hopeless cases can be cured. She was adopted at birth and knows nothing at all about her birth family. A man who restores old houses, Michael Curry, drowns while Rowan's on her boat. She rescues and revives him, and they fall in love.
Then there's Deirdre Mayfair, who's in a sort of vegatative state, and it turns out she's Rowan's mother, and the whole family are witches.
Enter Aaron Lightner, a member of the Talamasca, a group that studies supernatural phenomena, and has a big long file--mostly in the form of letters--on the Mayfair family.
Problem #1: Dr. Rowan believes that stem cell research is Coma with fetuses. This one happened early on, well before I was irritated with the book, and when I still expected to enjoy it. And every time I'd gotten over it, up it pops again, making my nutshell impression of the book a 1000+ page diatribe about the evils of stem cell research. It's perfectly fine to use magic to kill people who irritate you, but you're going to hell if you take some cells from an aborted fetus. Whoops. Sorry about that. As you can tell, it pushed my buttons. Particularly since Dr. Rowan is pointedly pro-choice.
Problem #2: The book starts with the POV of a doctor who's suspicious of Deirdre's care. It gives his whole life history (another problem--I'll be getting to it). Then nothing at all comes of it. Nothing. Ever. The doctor never shows up again. The plot thread is just completely dropped. It's bad enough when this happens in the middle of the book, but when it's what starts the book?
Problem #3: We get detailed life histories about every single person introduced in the book, whether it has anything to do with the plot or not. Some of them are interesting, but they're huge tangents, and I lost track of the plot for hundreds of pages at a time.
Problem #4: The book jumps back and forth in time. Part of this is caused by #3, but even within an individual character's story, there's jumping back and forth in time. It's disorienting, and not in a way that serves the story.
Problem #5: There's very little discussion, explanation, or demonstration of the witches' magical powers. Rowan has a little healing power, and other than that, their main magical power seems to be that they can see "The Man," Lasher. Oh, and when they die, it storms. That's pretty much it, except that they're very good at intrigue, manipulation, and shady business dealings. I'm quite possibly more demanding on this score because I've read an awful lot of fantasy, but I expect more than just "they're scary witches"--I'm not going to believe it unless you show me.
Problem #6: The History of the Mayfair Witches--the epistolary file introduced by Aaron Lightner. It's dull, dull, dull. Not only that, but it's prefaced with a note basically saying "I don't care what you think, it's not anachronistic!" accompanied by, in my head, the sound of a foot stomping. And the "letters" are really unconvincing as letters. At one point, someone's running for his life, and he stops to write a letter. Okay, I can buy that he wants to get the word back to the Talamasca. But you cannot convince me that he would take the time to describe the foliage or any of the other things that are depicted in excruciating detail that have nothing to do with the plot.
Problem #7: I did not buy the romance between Rowan and Michael Curry. You'd think that, in over 1000 pages, there'd be space to develop it convincingly, but no. She saves him, they reunite, then they have hawt secks and voila. They're in lurrrvve. Not buying it. I'm particularly not buying that they've instantly got a relationship that's stable enough to weather everything that'll get thrown at them.
Problem #8: Michael's psychic ability. It's quite cool, actually, that it showed up without warning, but that's when I expected it to be explained eventually. It wasn't.
Problem #9: Too much just wasn't explained. And some things that were huge problems just disappeared without being solved.
Problem #10: Rowan ends up being too stupid to live. Well, I guess that could have been predicted, given #1, but it was still an annoying surprise.
The thing is, this could have been a pretty good story if it were about 400 pages long. Cut out the life histories of every single character. Cut out the flashbacks. Cut out that damn history. Focus on the story in the here-and-now and develop it better. *sigh*
I've got at least 2 more Anne Rice books in my TBR pile. I'm approaching them with trepidation.
You will never forget "The Witching Hour" ! September 15, 2008
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
This book grabs you at the beginning and pulls you in. Your left on the edge of your seat waiting to see how to puzzle goes together.
There is a section of history, which is necessary, but long. Dont lose patience it is well worth the ending.
The ending is perfect, you put the book down only to reach for the next unable to stop yourself.
Anne Rice always finds the perfect tale. This one is full of love, mystery, seduction, incest, and family. Anne Rice never disappoints her audience.
 Be-witching September 9, 2008
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
I loved this book. Anne Rice is a master at weaving an interesting paranormal tale.
Like Harry Potter but for adults June 26, 2008
This book, and the others in the series are fabulous. With the exception of the 400 page history of the Mayfair family, which i personally found boring, the rest of this book is a spell-binding page turner that you can't resist. The protagonistis are so easy to like, the villains are so easy to hate. As this series progresses there is more and more detail which has revealed to me what an accomplished novelist Anne Rice is. Her historial scope of actions between generations (and between chapters) is masterful. if you like books about witches, ghosts, the supernatural and even a book that makes you think about life a little, this is for you. Try out the witching hour and if you like it, pick up Lasher, the second book. I dont think you'll be disappointed. Seriously, its like Harry Potter, but with adult prose and plenty of sex scenes!
Witches.......incredible book......rich tapestry June 10, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
I loved this delicious book. This book is definately not for everyone. It is tedious reading, there is no question, the language is lush, detailed, lengthy yet exquisite. If you love the art of writing, you will devour it, if you are an under-the-covers-fly-by-night quick books reader it may test your patience. Early on this book becomes almost a bible of sorts in the mayfair history, generations are recalled, so-and-s begat so-and-so, once you weed through the early generational tree, a beautifully written and interesting tale unfolds. I found myself re-reading some paragraphs because they were so delicious in description, I was in that house, ever nook and cranny is opened to the reader, these people are revealed; every aspect these characters are real, strong and flawed, weak and becoming. The story is incredibly enjoyable and it is a great read once you get through generational leap. But I would encourage you to read the history and not skip over it, while it may be a bit tedious in length at times, its a rich tapestry this book and all the pieces fit together in the end.
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