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Although I did not find Lasher quite as enjoyable as The Witching Hour, it was damn close and since TWH has become my second all-time favorite book, Lasher, in my humble opinion, was fantastic.

Granted, the content isn’t going to be for everyone. By the 1% mark, we are introduced to a new character, Mona Mayfair. She’s brilliant. She’s precocious, ambitious, articulate and strong and knows her own mind. Buuuut�. she’s also 13. And also shortly after her introduction (view spoiler)[she’s seducing and bonking her 15 year old cousin. And that intimacy exploit does not stop with that cousin. Oof. (hide spoiler)] Mona is such a great character; I hope she has a big part of the next book. She’s like the Wesley of the Mayfair family. Smart beyond all belief and as the reader you know everyone should be listening to Mona and I repeatedly found myself saying to my kindle, dudes�LISTEN to Mona! Geez!

If you’ve read TWH you know what this family is like. It’s got a lot of ickiness to it and some downright disturbing bits. Let’s just say Lasher has forced me to reevaluate my love for milk, cheese, and damn near everything dairy. Thank you very little for that, Auntie Anne. Yeesh. There are a lot of chapters that have a LOT to unpack.

But you know what? That’s what makes this such great literature that (hopefully) American Lit course delve into for generations and generations to come. What a world this is! Damn! So rich with detail and emotion and sensation. The fact that it challenges the reader and their boundaries should be a good thing. The series so far offers up a subtle, understated darkness. I love that about it. There’s so much mixed love/hate/dependency, the story made my head spin. But I was so engrossed. It also had some subtle suspense as to (view spoiler)[whether Rowan was going to make it and/or whether she was going to recover. (hide spoiler)]

I haven’t gotten through all the Vampire Chronicles. But dang, I gotta say, I love the Mayfair Witches trilogy so much, it’s hard to imagine the rest of Lestat, Louis, and the crew measuring up. Those vamps have got some big literary shoes to fill. And one thing I thought of as a cross over issue I will be interested to see relates to (view spoiler)[the Talamasca. If these guys know so much, why the heck haven’t the vamps raided/destroyed these guys and their archives since they have spent centuries gathering history and data on all this different supernatural stuff. Presumably that involves the vamps. So why hasn’t Armand or Lestat tried to wipe out their archives? Or have they and they just biffed it? Who knows? I know I don’t but I’ll be interested to see if this is addressed. (hide spoiler)]

I also enjoyed getting Lasher’s back story from his perspective. Dude’s still a monster in my humble opinion, but he’s not some unidimensional, mustache twirling baddie. I don’t think Auntie Anne could create such a character, but she offered up a compelling story that I could not have imagined for him. I love that because then I had to examine whether the really was a bad guy and I was motivated to reach my own conclusion. To me, (view spoiler)[he’s kind of a man baby, but then there is a bunch of stuff where he’s getting screwed over but then he's smart enough to know what he’s doing is bad, but there’s also some nuture/nature stuff in there. But dude’s smart enough to fight impulses if he really wanted to just live he wouldn’t have done all that horrible stuff to Rowan. (hide spoiler)] Others might reach a different conclusion but that is what is so awesome about Lasher as a protagonist and about the story. It’s so nuanced and complicated and nothing is clear cut you get to have your own journey irrespective of what others might experience. But it also, to me, interplayed nicely on the idea that humans are at least as big of monsters as anything else when it comes to our capacity for cruelty and rationalizing damn near anything we want to see as our reality.

Anywhoo…this was, to me, an awesome book and I love it and I love love love love love, Anne Rice and I can’t wait to delve into Taltos. Soon. I won’t be waiting a year like I did between The Witching Hour and Lasher.