She knows how bad this thing is, but still caves almost immediately to it in the most disgusting of ways.

The main descendent of the Mayfair family, Rowan, doesn't put up much of a battle against the demon, spirit, mass of small cells - thing that has been manipulating this family for generations. At this point, the main characters who have been established over the course of 850-900 pages behave in very uncharacteristic ways. It still meanders until the climax occurs near the very end of the book. But there still seems to be no drive to this plot. Then after the history lesson is complete and the characters become up to date on what is happening now with the present generation, the actual plot of the book kicks in, nearly 2/3 of the way through. Why would they do these things? There's some level of intrigue here. The middle third of the book is taken up by this history, where we learn about each generation of them, and how inbred they are, with fathers frequently fathering children with their daughters or even granddaughters. Then as the main characters learn more about the family central to this book, the Mayfair family, we read along with one of the characters as he is given a history of this family by a mysterious group that has been watching the Mayfair Witches for centuries, The Talamasca. The characters, setting, and story are gradually introduced over the first third of the story, and a lot of it is filled with mood-setting scenes, or background characters filling in information, which feels a lot like gossip. But where to start with this review? Wellll,let me start with the plot.

To be fair, this and the two-sequels, were hand-me-downs, so I didn't have much choice in where to start. This was my first ever Anne Rice book, so of course I choose one that was 1,038 pages. It took me two months, but I finally finished this behemoth.

The witching hour by anne rice