The Witching Hour

Rating:
Summary: This bookis what made me a huge Anne Rice fan!
Review: To be honest, I can't stand the Vampire Chronicles, and I'm glad I did not judge Anne Rice based only on those. Because the Mayfair Witch trilogy are 3 of the best books I've ever read. I highly recommend you all read the Witching Hour, Lasher, & Taltos! Oooh I still have shivers just thinking about these books. I also highly recommend Servant of the Bones - my absolutele most favorite stand-alone Anne Rice book. Happy reading!!

Rating:
Summary: CRAP!!!
Review: Come on Anne, shut up and tell a tale. She rattles on and on about uninteresting, unnecessary history instead of telling the story. 1038 pages could have been reduced to 300 and there would have been another forest on this planet. Your skills were SUCKED dry by the 1st three Vampire chronicles. DON'T LET HER WASTE YOUR TIME.

Rating:
Summary: Anne Rice at her best.
Review: This is Anne Rice at her best. One of my top five books of all time. The Witching Hour is a fascinating and historical tale of a family of witches from 1900 to present day. I won't explain the story as other reviewers have done so.
I believe anyone who thought the family history shouldn't have been relived in such detail missed the whole point of the story. And although I enjoyed the current day section of the book extremely, I thought the history of the family played an extremely important section of the book.
I was a bit confused as to the role of Julien Mayfair in the whole story but this became obvious later on and even more fascinating in later books.
I will continue rereading and enjoying this book for many years to come.

Rating:
Summary: Needs an better editor.
Review: I am an extremely patient person and usually finish every book I start regardless if it's an entertaining book or not. I could "NOT" finish this. After reading 717 pages of this 960 page book, I finally gave up. I really hate when stardome affords authors the ability to publish anything they want and write as much as they want. This book is exactly 500 pages TOO LONG and I love long books. The problem is that Rice leads the reader on for way too long. The first 250 pages are very interesting and very entertaining but once she dwelves into the history of the witches it because extremely repetitive. Every single generation of witches have the same experience with this so call ghost "Lasher", He picks one to torment and struggles with the rest of the family to continue his existance. This small synopsis is usually described in 2 to 3 pages of each generation even though the whole history portion of the book is about 500 pages. The rest of the pages include a sprawling account of the family's wealth, sometimes sexually deviances, and boring fueds within the relatives. With all of this said, I survived the history portion of this book and thought that I was finally going to get to the climax of the book.
Well a hundred pages later, Rice then decideds to describe every detail of the Mayfair HOUSE renovation.

That's right people,, After 700 pages of reading family history, she actually felt comfortable adding a completely boring section about the main character and her boyfriend renovating the old Mayfair House.
I'm an architect and I still found this to be extremely arrogant and pretentious of the author to include such a boring section at the portion of a novel that usually includes the climax. I then stopped reading because I could careless what happens at the end ,,,,besides nothing in the last 200 pages could save the previous 700 page disaster.



Rating:
Summary: Anne Rice Waxes Magical On Witchcraft - A Superb Novel!
Review: "The Witching Hour," is Anne Rice at her best, as a writer and as a seductive spinner of tales. This is a story of a family, the Mayfair family, and a city, Anne Rice's beloved New Orleans. It is also a saga of witchcraft, seduction, hauntings, incest, madness, murder...and of love. It is my favorite novel by the author and as many times as I read "The Witching Hour," and I have read it a few, I always discover something new that delights and holds me spellbound.

Rowan Mayfair is a beautiful, brilliant young woman and a gifted neurosurgeon. Although she knows that she has special extrasensory powers, she is totally unaware that she comes from an ancient line of witches. Rowan was born in the decaying family mansion in New Orleans, and was taken from her mother at birth and raised by an aunt in California. Now she is to inherit the Mayfair family fortune. There is another inheritance also. A powerful witch has existed in the Mayfair family in each generation for the past five centuries - but Rowan is not aware of this, nor does she know she is now the reigning Mayfair Witch .

Michael Curry almost drowns while swimming off the California coast. Rowan miraculously saves his life. His close brush with death gives Michael supernatural powers, powers he does not understand and that frighten him. He and Rowan both share a history in New Orleans. He too was born there, and orphaned there at the age of five, and he is integrally tied to the Mayfair witches. The two are fiercely drawn to each other from the first, and fall deeply in love. Unbeknownst to the couple, as their histories are entwined, so are their futures. They return to New Orleans together, to the ancient Mayfair home, to solve the puzzle of Rowan's heritage and Michael's unwelcome extrasensory gifts. Assisting them in piecing together the family history is occult investigator Aaron Lightner. Ms. Rice uses the detailed documents of the Talamasca, a fictional group of scholars who have studied and chronicled occult happenings for centuries, to unfold the fascinating history of witchcraft and the family. The novel moves back and forth in time and space, from New Orleans in the 20th century to 17th-century Scotland, from today's San Francisco to Haiti and the antebellum south, and to the France of Louis XIV.

Like the twelve Mayfair witches before her, Rowan senses and then sees the spirit called Lasher, almost from the moment she enters the Louisiana house. This otherworldly being was conjured up and named by the first family witch and he has, in turn, tormented every succeeding generation of Mayfairs. He has also gifted them with great wealth and prosperity. Now Lasher wants to come through from the world of specters to this world, and Rowan is the only one who can open the door for him.

Ms. Rice writes a dramatic and compelling narrative. Her imagery is powerful. And no one captures the essence of the French Quarter, the streets, foliage and hidden corners of New Orleans, like she does. I was totally absorbed by the intricate Mayfair family history. Each generation has their own stories. Many of the characters are flamboyant and outright outrageous, adding just the right amounts of magic, sensuality, spice and wickedness to the storyline. And I felt compassion, not fear, for Lasher, who is one of the most unique figures I have encountered in all Ms. Rice's work. The ending is spectacular, but somewhat ambiguous. The first time I read the book I didn't realize there would be a sequel. Fortunately, there are two - so at the end of the "Lives of the Mayfair Witches Trilogy" all threads are neatly tied and no one is left in the dark.

This is a fantastic series, with "The Witching Hour" being the strongest of the three novels. Highly recommended.
JANA

Rating:
Summary: TERRIBLE!!!!
Review: I am a fan of Anne Rice's vampire chronicles. But I found this book to be incredibly long (I usually love long books), drawn out, boring, ect... I felt like I was reading a history book in school. It was hard to remember who was whose mom and dad. And what uncle slept with what neice or father with daughter. I found myself very tempted several times to just put it down. After about 500 pages it starts to get mildly interesting. But it still seemed like it went on forever. Even during the climax and at the very end I found myself skipping entire paragraphs at a time just to finish it.

I DO NOT recommend anyone buy this book unless they are just really bored and have nothing else to read. Read her vampire chronicles instead, especially Memnoch the Devil and Queen of the Damned.

Rating:
Summary: captivating
Review: I love this book! It starts out a little slow...very slow. I wasn't sure what was going on or what the point was but if you can get past the first 40 pages in this 1038 page book, it gets a whole lot better. Anne Rice tends write in way more details than necessary (this book is no exception), but in this book, it is a lot less annoying. The climax is seriously not until the very last two pages, but it is well worth the wait!

Rating:
Summary: The best Anne Rice book to date
Review: This has to be the best Anne Rice book I have read so far. It's sexy, suspenseful, scary, exciting.....the plotline is great! Dont get intimidated by the vast amount of pages (over 1000!). Because every single one of them hooks you in. The sex scenes are erotic without being trashy (or too Harlenquin-esque). All in all, its a very, very, excellent read. I recommend it.

Rating:
Summary: A masterpiece from Anne Rice
Review: This is perhaps the finest novel Anne Rice has written. The story starts in present day New Orleans and with numerous flashbacks throughout history, we see the saga of the Mayfair witches. It is long but really worth reading. The characters are interesting, and diverse. Their personalities are captivating and they reflect the era they live and yet a part of this unusual family.....

Rating:
Summary: If you only read one book by Anne Rice, read this one
Review: This is Anne Rice's most mesmerising book. I had read the Vampire Chronicles before this, and I do love them, especially the first 2. But I found the Witching Hour more irresistable. Though over a thousand pages, I finished it in a few days. Just couldn't put it down. If you want to be taken away to another world, read this. When I was in New Orleans, I could imagine that the Mayfairs live in that city.

All of Anne Rice's characters here are utterly compelling, Michael Curry, Julien Mayfair, Lasher, ...etc and esp. Rowan Mayfair, my favourite Anne Rice character (sorry Lestat).

Make sure you get Lasher and Taltos, because when you finish this book, you will want more.