“And Carlotta, Carlotta who was stronger than Stella – Carlotta wouldn’t help. She lay on her bed upstairs during the seance, staring at the ceiling, and she was saying her rosary aloud, and after every Hail Mary, she said, ‘Send him back to hell, send him back to hell!’ – and then went on to the next Hail Mary.”
I am an avid Anne Rice fan. I know that it isn’t essential for me to say so, all one has to do is follow my obsession with vampires for it to become apparent. But what some may not know is that I am as much a fan of the rest of her work as I am of the Vampire Chronicles. One series in particular which I am rereading my way through is the three novels under the collective title of the Lives of the Mayfair Witches. Currently I find myself traipsing through the loved and worn pages of my copy of Taltos, purely an accidental rediscovery, finding it lost in a drawer and having nothing else to draw inspiration from. The last time I picked up a Mayfair novel was over eight years ago. And after only fifty pages, I find myself falling into the mire of intrigue and mystery that this novel is founded upon once more.
I recall feeling deliciously enticing thrills when I first devoured The Witching Hour with its sensual descriptions of the house on First and Chestnut, the one with the keyhole door. I especially found the strange isolation of First street Mayfairs to be unnerving. A tightly knit family wherein few understand the inner occurrences of those that reside in that house. But those simple opening descriptions of the witches and there somewhat estranged family simultaneously set the reader’s skin crawling and their fingers itching to turn the page.
Even when she chose to abolish the mysterious darkness surrounding the character of Lasher, she immediately injected into the tale a new element of intrigue with the otherworldly Taltos. A species of creature so alien to humans and yet incredibly beautiful, regardless, that enticed a hidden terror in men and a forbidden lust in women. But also a race that drove a mother to shoot her own child when Rowan came to understand the threat her daughter Emaleth would pose for the human race.
The series in itself is a sticky pool of incest and love between familiars and strangers. However it also subtly broaches intrinsic elements of humanity, as all of her novels do. Subliminally provoking the reader to ponder thoughts readers are seldom subjected to.
Carmen Dominique Taxer 