L'Heure Des Sorcieres / The Hour of Sorcieres (French Edition)

"SEDUCTIVE MAGIC...SPELLBINDING...Rice stages her scenes in a wide variety of times and locales, tapping deeply into the richest veins of mythology and history."
—San Francisco Chronicle
"STEAMY...FAST-PACED AND HUGELY ENGROSSING...Rice's title character—a seductive, evil, highly sexual and ultimately tragic creature—is fascinating."
—The Miami Herald
"BEHIND ALL THE VELVET DRAPES AND GOSSAMER WINDING SHEETS, THIS IS AN OLD-FASHIONED FAMILY SAGA....Rice's descriptive writing is so opulent it almost begs to be read by candlelight."
—The Washington Post Book World
"RICE SEES THINGS ON A GRAND SCALE...There is a wide-screen historical sweep to the tale as it moves from one generation of witches to the other."
—The Boston Globe
"EROTIC...EERIE...HORRIFYING...A tight tale of the occult in present-day New Orleans...Anne Rice is a spellbinding novelist.... LASHER quenches."
—Denver Post A MAIN SELECTION OF THE LITERARY GUILD(c)

BookList

So stunningly bad is the first third of this book that only the lunatic and the true devotee are likely to get beyond it. It is actually a riot of Rice's worst sins: strained and wooden characterizations, the abandonment of plot for the sake of a tangled and murky history, and a sort of mutant prose stumbling between a modern person's idea of old-fashioned elegance and an old-fashioned person's idea of how people actually talk in the 1990s. Part of the purpose of this 200-page cancer is to make the transition from the novel's progenitor, The Witching Hour (1990), but this could have been accomplished in 10 or 15 pages. Well, let's say you made it through. What you get now is the best of Rice: a deliciously perverse image of an infant, Lasher, who grows to sexual maturity within days of his birth and immediately starts copulating with his mother even while she swoons with the pleasure of his suckling. Of course, it's always nice to read about sex, and Rice's romantic imagination doesn't let her down: Lasher is dark, handsome, sadistic, childlike, and tender. His mother cannot resist him even after she has twice miscarried in the space of three months. But Rice cannot quite bring home the promising story of Lasher's desire to repopulate the earth with his own kind, and the story limps to an unsatisfying conclusion. By the end, then, we've had a bit of everything: the good, the bad, and the truly ugly. Indeed, without her reputation, Rice would never have found a publisher for this wretched mess.

From the day her first Vampire Chronicle was published, critics and readers--readers by the hundreds of thousands--have been mesmerized by the writings of Anne Rice. And with the publication of The Witching Hour, she created for us yet another world and legend, and both the chorus of praise and the multitudes of her readers once more increased. Now, Anne Rice brings us again--even more magically--into the midst of the dynasty of witches she introduced in The Witching Hour. At the center: the brilliant an beautiful Rowan Mayfair, queen of the coven, and Lasher, the darkly compelling demon whom she finds irresistible and from whose evil spell and vision she must now flee. She takes with her their terrifying and exquisite child, one of "a brood of children born knowing, able to stand and talk on the first day." Rowan's attempt to escape Lasher and his pursuit of her and their child are at the heart of this extraordinary saga. It is a novel that moves around the globe, backward and forward through time, and between the human and demonic worlds. Its many voices--of women, of men, of demons and angels, present and past--haunt and enchant us. With a dreamlike power, the novel draws us through twilight paths, telling a chillingly hypnotic story of occult and spiritual aspirations and passion. --front flap From the day her first Vampire Chronicle was published, critics and readers - readers by the hundreds of thousands - have been mesmerized by the writings of Anne Rice. And with the publication of The Witching Hour, she created for us yet another world and legend, and both the chorus of praise and the multitudes of her readers and listeners once more increased. Now, Anne Rice brings us again - even more magically - into the midst of the dynasty of witches she introduced in The Witching Hour. At the center: the brilliant an beautiful Rowan Mayfair, queen of the coven, and Lasher, the darkly compelling demon whom she finds irresistible and from whose evil spell and vision she must now flee. She takes with her their terrifying and exquisite child, one of "a brood of children born knowing, able to stand and talk on the first day". Rowan's attempt to escape Lasher and his pursuit of her and their child are at the heart of this extraordinary saga. It is a novel that moves around the globe, backward and forward through time, and between the human and demonic worlds. Its many voices - of women, of men, of demons and angels, present and past - haunt and enchant us. With a dreamlike power, the novel draws us through twilight paths, telling a chillingly hypnotic story of occult and spiritual aspirations and passion The Talamasca, documenters of paranormal activity, is on the hunt for the newly born Lasher. Mayfair women are dying from hemorrhages and a strange genetic anomaly has been found in Rowan and Michael. Lasher, born from Rowan, is another species altogether and now in the corporeal body, represents an incalcuable threat to the Mayfairs. Rowan and Lasher travel together to Houston and she becomes pregnant with another creature like him, a Taltos. Lasher seeks to reproduce his race in other women, but they cannot withstand it. Rowan escapes and becomes comatose as her fully-grown Taltos daughter is born. The Mayfairs declare all-out war on Lasher and try to nurse Rowan back to heatlth. Michael remains entwined in the Mayfair family and learns how he comes by his strange powers. Michael's ghostly visiting from a long-dead Mayfair reveals the importance of destroying Lasher. In the investigation, Lasher's origins are revealed, the new Taltos Emaleth returns, and the climax of death and life engulfs the family. ([source][1]) [1]: http://annerice.com/Bookshelf-Lasher.html At the center of this dark and compelling tale is Rowan Mayfair, queen of the coven, who must flee from the darkly brutal, yet irresistible demon known as Lasher