So, this time around Stormi and I tried a new series. I read the entire trilogy when I was in high school/college and loved it so much. I'm pretty sure I've been on to Stormi for several years to read it. Well, we finally did - or should I say we tried. Read on to see my thoughts. In order to make it a tad more interesting, I'm doing my review in the form of a conversation between Past Me (PM) and Current Me (CM). Then hop over and see what Stormi thought at Storm Reads ... and if she is still talking to me.
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 château 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.
MY THOUGHTS:
PM: Man, I loved this book. It's so great everyone should read it. The witches, the New Orleans atmosphere, the creepy characters. It's all so great I'm sure it's gonna be one of my all-time favorite reads. I carried this book around in my car for years I loved it so much.
CM: Yea, it was an all-time favorite until you tried to read it again. You were in college when you read this. Are you sure you weren't influenced by something else? And as for it being in the car for years, I'm pretty sure it was in the trunk from where you moved and you just left it there.
PM: No, Anne Rice is a wonderful writer. I'm going to read everything she comes out with. The woman is a genius.
CM: In all honestly, you've read three books from her in the past 30 years, she can't be THAT much of a favorite. And as for her being the best??? Do you know how many other books you are going to read in your lifetime? You should probably hold back on making judgement calls after falling in love with one book. And I'm pretty sure she's weird.
PM: Well, more people definitely need to read this and man, it's so good, they should make a series. I'm so glad it was almost 1000 pages long. More pages equal more to love.
CM: Yea, that Anne Rice sure was a wordy woman. And you didn't even manage to make it past 400 pages this time around. If it wasn't for the fact that you finished "Little Heaven" which she DNF'ed, I'd say Stormi might not do any more buddy reads with you. How did you convince her to read such drivel? How much description do one really need about the Louisiana heat and the decrepit porch or the growing kudzu? That guy should have hit his head when he went off the bank into the ocean and died. Book over.
PM: You don't know what you're talking about. You're so lucky they finally are making a series. And the relationship between Michael and Rowan is so romantic.
CM: Pretty sure you had a pretty low bar for romance back then. Yep I'm lucky alright. I can't even bring myself to watch the new Vampire series after being scarred by Tom Cruise as a would-be romantic bloodsucker years ago. I'm not so sure I'll be tuning in to the witch one. On the other hand, it might be somewhat better than the book but seeing as how I didn't finish it this time around, I'll probably never know! I still think you were on something.
RATING: DNF
That was fun! It's amazing how our tastes change isn't it?????
ReplyDeleteLol, so funny. I loved this series too, way back when. Not sure I could get through it today!
ReplyDelete