"Lasher" by Anne Rice

Honestly, I didn't mean to read this at all - after all, I read (perhaps I should say re-read) "The Witching Hour" exactly a year ago and concluded that on the second look, the book was not really so thrilling as I remember the first time around. The saga about New Orleans family of witches started brilliantly but got bogged down with way too many sidetracks into long and detailed history of the family and somewhere along the way I got even frustrated why the main story (set in present time) completely became second to all that huge family tree. So I let the sequels be and focused my attention to other books but somewhere in the corner of my mind I always remember that there is a trilogy of Mayfair Witches waiting for me to finish it. As I just finished "The Further Adventures of Robinson Crusoe" and was browsing trough my book collection, lo and behold, something tempted me to just have a peek into sequel to "The Witching Hour". Curiosity killed the cat.

Its simply not possible to 'just have a peek" into Anne Rice novel. As I already wrote earlier, Rice is a masterful storyteller, a gothic magician with witch powers of her own who grabs a hold of reader from the first page and before you know it, you are sucked into her world. I had actually completely fell under her spell and not only that I could not put the darn thing down but found myself reading (with greatest excitement and pleasure) long into the night after my work, in the morning before the work, even during my dinner breaks. It got so bad that I even considered smuggling my Kindle to work and pretend I am doing something important while reading it, but felt guilty about it. It could be that I spend too much time with literature that did not really thrilled me, and now this is something that actually truly and genuinely excites me - I always loved Anne Rice and read so many of her novels that it all became blur and should probably re-read them all again. Whatever faults I found with "The Witching Hour", everything is forgiven now - I still think its one of the best things Rice has ever written (after all, I went trough it twice) - majority of the story happens in present time and even though we do have obligatory character's life story as told trough flashback, it didn't bother me this time around. If anything, I feel stupid for not continuing reading this trilogy immediately because now I slightly forgotten the names of all those people and who is who - however I do remember Rowan, Michael and the whole Talamasca business (which this time around turned sinister and I don't believe them anymore). Nobody really important dies, although there are tones of death, blood, murders and incest, in fact Rice was positively going trough rampage this time around, I mean she was really, truly and definitely painting the picture with some strong, dark strokes and mixed it all with religion, cathedrals, plague, my God I am still reeling from all that power - powerful writer - I enjoyed this so much that my next reading choice is easy to predict. What else to do but to continue with the third part of the trilogy. Mayfair witches, here I come again.