Mayfair Witches is a popular series of novels written by Anne Rice. The series focuses on a multigenerational family of witches, known as the Mayfair witches, and their supernatural experiences in New Orleans. The books are known for their rich storytelling, intricate plotlines, and well-developed characters. Fan art has become a significant part of the Mayfair Witches fandom, with many talented artists creating stunning artworks inspired by the series. These fan-created illustrations often depict the main characters, such as Rowan Mayfair, Lasher, and Mona Mayfair, in various settings and scenarios. The fan art captures the essence of the characters and brings them to life in a visual form.

Mayfair Witches

I’ve started watching the series Mayfair Witches. It’s a blend of elements taken from Anne Rice’s books, Blackwood Farm and Mayfair Chronicles. Hey, it gets them to New Orleans, with witches and ghosts and we’ll see if any vampires come along. It has the Talamasca and scary Lasher. The woman doctor combines with some of Tarquin Blackwood’s story, squished into one character.

New Orleans provides rich content for scenes: a street parade funeral; houses with just the right chiaroscuro of aging ornateness and nature’s takeover; old hotels; vintage clothing.

I’m an Anne Rice fan. At least I appreciate a selection of her Vampire Chronicles. Her more recent werewolf series is decent though I didn’t find the compelling emotion and grappling with ethics of Blood and Gold, The Vampire Lestat and a few others, including Blackwood Farm, one of my favorites. One of the appeals of Blackwood Farm is David Pittu, the narrator of the audiobook. He has a delicious Southern accent for the New Orleans setting, as well as his French accent for Lestat and English accent for the Talamasca, David.

In this type of story, being a witch is genetic. They inherit powers. Like causing people to die because they’re mad at them. There are many witch series and power coming along in the DNA is common. It goes against the modern pagan idea of what it is to be a witch, but I’m curious where this show goes. The plot line may not bear over-thinking.

The Witching Hour

From the author of the extraordinary Vampire Chronicles comes a huge, hypnotic novel of witchcraft and the occult through four centuries.

Demonstrating, once again, her gift for spellbinding storytelling and the creation of legend, Anne Rice makes real for us a great dynasty of witches—a family given to poetry and to incest, to murder and to philosophy; a family that, over the ages, is itself haunted by a powerful, dangerous, and seductive being.

On the veranda of a great New Orleans house, now faded, a mute and fragile woman sits rocking. and The Witching Hour begins.

It begins in our time with a rescue at sea. Rowan Mayfair, a beautiful woman, a brilliant practitioner of neurosurgery—aware that she has special powers but unaware that she comes from an ancient line of witches—finds the drowned body of a man off the coast of California and brings him to life. He is Michael Curry, who was born in New Orleans and orphaned in childhood by fire on Christmas Eve, who pulled himself up from poverty, and who now, in his brief interval of death, has acquired a sensory power that mystifies and frightens him.

As these two, fiercely drawn to each other, fall in love and—in passionate alliance—set out to solve the mystery of her past and his unwelcome gift, the novel moves backward and forward in time from today's New Orleans and San Francisco to long-ago Amsterdam and a château in the France of Louis XIV. An intricate tale of evil unfolds—an evil unleashed in seventeenth-century Scotland, where the first "witch," Suzanne of the Mayfair, conjures up the spirit she names Lasher. a creation that spells her own destruction and torments each of her descendants in turn.

From the coffee plantations of Port au Prince, where the great Mayfair fortune is made and the legacy of their dark power is almost destroyed, to Civil War New Orleans, as Julien—the clan's only male to be endowed with occult powers—provides for the dynasty its foothold in America, the dark, luminous story encompasses dramas of seduction and death, episodes of tenderness and healing. And always—through peril and escape, tension and release—there swirl around us the echoes of eternal war: innocence versus the corruption of the spirit, sanity against madness, life against death. With a dreamlike power, the novel draws us, through circuitous, twilight paths, to the present and Rowan's increasingly inspired and risky moves in the merciless game that binds her to her heritage. And in New Orleans, on Christmas Eve, this strangest of family sagas is brought to its startling climax.

Genres HorrorFantasyFictionParanormalWitchesSupernaturalGothic

1207 pages, Paperback

First published October 1, 1990

About the author

Anne Rice

Anne Rice (born Howard Allen Frances O'Brien) was a best-selling American author of gothic, supernatural, historical, erotica, and later religious themed books. Best known for The Vampire Chronicles, her prevailing thematic focus is on love, death, immortality, existentialism, and the human condition. She was married to poet Stan Rice for 41 years until his death in 2002. Her books have sold nearly 100 million copies, making her one of the most widely read authors in modern history.

Anne Rice passed on December 11, 2021 due to complications from a stroke. She was eighty years old at the time of her death.

She uses the pseudonym Anne Rampling for adult-themed fiction (i.e., erotica) and A.N. Roquelaure for fiction featuring sexually explicit sado-masochism.

The fan art captures the essence of the characters and brings them to life in a visual form. One of the most common themes in Mayfair Witches fan art is the portrayal of the witches' magical powers. Artists often depict the witches using their abilities, such as telekinesis, mind control, and clairvoyance.

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I actually quite enjoyed this book up until the very end, when I felt like the main female character just had some sort of weird personality seizure and did something that the character as you've come to know her just wouldn't have done. It just made it seem poorly written to me, like Ms. Rice decided in the last 10 pages or so that it was going to have a sequel after all when she had been intending from the beginning for it to be a one-book story.

Warning: SPOILERS. And gifs. Lots of both, actually.

I don't even know how to summarize what I've just finished. It's like trying to tell someone what happens in a George RR Martin novel. You might try to list item by item, but everything is woven with everything else & there's no way to distinguish in the grand scheme. "Oh, y'know. Stuff happens. People threaten each other. People fight. People die. People have sex. More stuff happens. More people fight. More people die. The end."

Before I get to what cheesed me off, let me say that the middle third of this book was great. I absolutely loved the family history portion of this novel -- the compendium of sources & snippets relating to the Mayfair family through several hundred years. I would've happily read a complete novel about those people & their fucked-up family dynamic.

Unfortunately, the long-running cycle of Mayfair Witches seemed almost secondary to the primary plot -- a strange thing to say, yes, given that the series is called "The Mayfair Chronicles." But there it is. Rather than spend more time with Charlotte, Deborah, Carlotta, Stella, Julien, & everyone else, it's painfully apparent that their lives & misadventures are leading to Rowan Mayfair & her boyfriend, Michael Curry, as their lives are woven into the Evul Plans of a very determined demon. spirit. thing named Lasher.

Before I get to Rowan & Michael, let's talk about Lasher. What IS Lasher? After 1000 pages, he's still not clearly defined. He's an immortal being with intelligence that was called into Earthly existence by a simpleton witch & over the centuries he's learned to manipulate mortals & breed them together in his ultimate quest -- that is, he wants to give himself a body. One would think that makes him mortal, but apparently not. (Just one of several logic gaps. Ignore them as needed.) At any rate, Lasher has been interbreeding one family because he looks into the future & sees one specific witch (Rowan) as his door into the world of sensational experience. As powerful as other witches have been -- especially Charlotte, Julien, & Mary Beth -- they lack Rowan's conceptions of modernity & medicine, which are what make her so strong.

Or something. It's a really long-term Cunning Plan(tm).

Yeah, that's right. The demon. spirit. thing has a Cunning Plan(tm), & it's worthy of Gray Eagle himself.

As for how Lasher's final transformation is to be accomplished. well, it was somewhat nonsensical. It involves Lasher fusing himself with the fetus in Rowan's body, which then emerges in a bloody scene of horrific birthing (though still vague in detail). This mutant spawn is born with a giant head & limbs that grow into full man-size within minutes, & Rowan has to lay her hands on his body & make sure his organs develop properly so he can actually live & breathe & have sex & walk around. The whole thing is beyond serious recount. Clearly the author was going for some kind of Frankenstein tribute, but it didn't work. By this point -- somewhere around page 1015 -- I just didn't give a fuck. And who's to blame for my not caring? Rowan & Michael.

Michael is a classically-styled nice guy, but that's ALL he is. His niceness is boring as hell. He's built like a firefighter & uber-sensitive -- as in, he cries at the beauty of Christmas & finds poetry in restoring old houses & weeps inside at the ecstasy of making love with Rowan. (Yes, really.) But despite my personal feelings toward this sort of hero, Michael's woobie behavior might have been tolerable had the heroine made up for it.

Nope. Didn't happen.

Rowan has mysterious healing powers, but she can also kill people with her mind. That sounds great in theory -- except she's a moo of the first order. She judges constantly, looks down on people for having Feelz, & drives like a maniac because she's just that awesome. But she's so very, very lonely & deprived of emotional companionship & of course her powers scare her, but she's determined to use them for good & healing & compassion toward the little people of the universe who are human enough to need medical care, and.

Excuse me for disparaging her self-righteous spews of whinge. *chortle* At the end of the book, after vowing repeatedly & at great length to destroy Lasher at her first opportunity, what does she do? She falls into the first mental trap Lasher sets, abandons the great love of her life that she's been banging on about for the entire novel, lets a demonic spirit seduce her, falls in love with said demonic spirit, heals his freaky fetus body because she can't bear to destroy life, & runs away with him to hide in Europe & do medical research on his cellular tissues. Seriously?

So what happened to the Mayfair Witches storyline -- the one about a family of occultists that do witchy things to each other & have a ghost haunting their family? Looking back, I can only say the book's true focus wasn't on witchcraft. I wanted to read a 1000-page book about an inbred line of witches. but that's not what I got. Instead I found a 400-page family history & a 600-page metaphysical sci-fi adaptation of the The Omen. The result was a book that felt like two different concepts forced into one unwieldy whole -- not to mention the book was 300 pages too long. o_O

3.5 stars. The family compendium was quite interesting, but the rest was a borderline snooze.

To conclude, here's a picture of Robb holding an armload of puppies.

. I feel better already.

It feels like a slow seduction.
You felt the foreboding first. Vicious, poisonous, catastrophic…all mingled together, a darkness so black and deep.

You felt the dizziness. A history brought you to various places, New Orleans, Amsterdam, France, Port-air-Prince. A history that was a secret itself. Incest, greed, lust, revenge, murder, jealousy, so morbid and complex that you were frightened. You were thrilled.

One of the most amazing books I’ve ever read. It reminds me of how I used to read when I was a teenager. I read, read, and read, I can read anywhere and anytime and pick up the book without feel distracted. It took me almost three weeks to finish it, but I enjoyed every second of this story. Anne Rice is such an amazing story teller.

P.S. Rowan Mayfair is one of the most disturbing female protagonist I have ever encountered. There is something really masculine about her, and the malice in her chilled me to the bone from the very beginning.

Key Words: Haunted House | witchcraft | multi-generational family dramas | dysfunctional family

My witchathon concludes with The Witching Hour, the eleventh novel by Anne Rice. Published in 1990, I was hoping it might be the author's thirteenth book, but this goth epic of blood, sugar, sex and black magic is a monster as is. The word count is 327,360 words, 10,000 shy of Stephen King's baby high chair Under the Dome. Rice is a gifted scenarist who sets the table for adult horror dripping with sensuality and dread, the type moviegoers had to imagine in the 1940s with thrillers like Cat People or I Walked With a Zombie. While her atmosphere is combustible, her storytelling skills are flaccid and I reached a point where I just wanted this to end.

The novel gets off impressively. Chapters one through six alternate between three main characters and three citizens of New Orleans: a doctor, a priest and a woman who marries into a family owned funeral parlor. These locals are traumatized by their experiences with Deirdre Mayfair, a woman in her late 40s and heir to a family fortune. Deirdre has existed in a catatonic state for thirty years since her child was taken away from her to be raised by a cousin in California. Cared for by her sister Carlotta, Deirdre wastes away in a grand but decaying house on First Street, spook central for stories the nuns tell naughty children about witches in the Garden District.

The doctor, the priest and the woman have at one time wanted to help cure Deirdre or reunite her with her daughter, but find the heir to the Mayfair fortune to be lost in her own world, as well as controlled not only by feared attorney Miss Carl, but a strange man that has been seen near her for years. Each of our do-gooders has had an encounter with that man and unburden themselves to inquiring mind Aaron Lightner, an Englishman who's part historian and part psychic detective for a transcontinental organization called the Talamasca, which in addition to investigating vampires and ghosts, has kept tabs on the Mayfair family for generations.

Lightner had proved an excellent listener, responding gently without ever interrupting, But the doctor did not feel better. In fact, he felt foolish when it was over. As he watched Lightner gather up the little tape recorder and put it in his briefcase, he had half a mind to ask for the tape.

It was Lightner who broke the silence as he laid down several bills over the check.

"There is something I must explain to you," he said. "I think it will ease your mind.:

What could possibly do that?

"You remember," Lightner said, "that I told you I collect ghost stories."

"Well, I know of that old house in New Orleans. I've seen it. And I've recorded other stories of people who have seen the man you described."

The doctor was speechless. The words had been said with utter conviction. In fact, they had been spoken with such authority and assurance that the doctor believed them without doubt. He studied Lightener in detail for the first time. The man was older than he seemed on first inspection. Perhaps sixty-five, even seventy. The doctor found himself captivated again by Lightner's expression, so affable and trusting, so inviting of trust in return.

"Others," the doctor whispered. "Are you sure?"

"I've heard other accounts, some very like your own. And I tell you this so you understand that you didn't imagine it. And so it doesn't continue to prey on your mind. You couldn't have helped Deirdre Mayfair, by the way. Carlotta Mayfair would never have allowed it. You ought to put the entire incident out of your mind. Don't ever worry about it again."

Meanwhile, in San Francisco, forty-eight year old Michael Curry has plied himself with beer and shut himself indoors while the news media stake him out. Pulled from the bay and revived after drowning, the New Orleans native and restorer of old houses has discovered an unwanted talent for psychometry, picking up psychic visions off any object he touches. Donning leather gloves to blunt the effect, Michael received a vision while clinically dead of others instructing him that he had some purpose to fulfill, but can't remember what it is he's supposed to do. He compels his doctor to track down his rescuer, hoping he might have spoken about his vision to them.

Michael's savoir is Rowan Mayfair, thirty year old board-certified Staff Attending in Neurosurgery. Rejecting a promising career in research, Rowan has found her calling in trauma surgery. Raised by wealthy adoptive parents in Tiburon and recently orphaned, she recharges her batteries after a fifteen-hour shift by taking her yacht, the Sweet Christine into Richardson Bay and then the open sea. The cabin of the yacht has been the location of Rowan's other favorite pasttime, taking select cops, firemen or first responders she picks up in neighborhood bars for recreational sex.

Rowan has followed Michael's story in the tabloids and wants to contact him for far more than professional courtesy. There are three people Rowan knows of that she's has killed by thought, most recently, her philandering adoptive father who threatened to leave Rowan's terminally ill adoptive mother unless Rowan slept with him. Michael's experience with psychic phenomena make him one of her people, while his rough and tumble build, blue eyes and worker's hands cloaked in leather have their allure to her as well. Rowan takes Michael to her home and in addition to vividly describing the mystique of New Orleans and San Francisco, Rice demonstrates her facility for writing hot sex.

When he saw her breasts through the thin covering of nylon, he kissed them through the cloth, deliberately teasing himself, his tongue touching the dark circle of the nipple before he forced the cloth away. What did it feel like, the black leather touching her skin, caressing her nipples? He lifted her breasts, kissing the hot curve of them underneath--he loved this particular juicy crevice--then he sucked the nipples hard, one after the other, rubbing and gathering the flesh feverishly with the palm of his hand.

She was twisting under him, her body moving helplessly it seemed, her lips grazing his unevenly shaven chin, then all soft and sweet over his mouth, her hands slipping into his shirt and feeling his chest as if she loved the flatness of it.

She pinched his nipples as he suckled hers. He was so hard he was going to spill. He stopped, rose on his hands, and tried to catch his breath, then sank down next to her. He knew she was pulling off her jeans. He brought her close, feeling the smooth flesh of her back, then moving down to the curve of her soft clutchable and kneadable little bottom.

No waiting now, he couldn't. In a rage of impatience he took off his glasses and shoved them on the bedside table. Now she would be a lush soft blur to him, but all the physical details he'd seen were ever present in his mind. He was on top of her. Her hand moved against his crotch, unzipped his pants, and brought out his sex, roughly, slapping it as if to test its hardness--a little gesture that almost brought him over the edge. He felt the prickly curling thatch of pubic hair, the heated inner lips, and finally the tight pulsing sheath itself as he entered.

I did mention that The Witching Hour is 327,360 words, so, if you like the supernatural and erotica, Anne Rice has more. A lot more.

After three rounds of world class sex, Michael takes leave of Rowan to make a flight to New Orleans (he'd booked his passage before they officially met). Michael feels pulled to his hometown and after picking up no clues from Rowan or her boat, believes the riddle behind his vision lies in the Big Easy. Michael has many memories of the city, particularly a house on First Street in the Garden District his mother would take him past on walks and where a strange man watched him from the porch. Drunk, Michael heads straight for that house and sees the man again. He passes out.

When Michael recovers, he finds himself at the Pontchartrain Hotel with Aaron Lightner. The Englishman attempted to make contact with Michael in San Francisco, intrigued by his psychometric talents, and is operating under the impression that Rowan Mayfair hired Michael to do some work for her in New Orleans. Through much exposition, Lightner reveals that Rowan is heir to a vast family fortune here in the Crescent City and that house that Michael has been obsessed with--and everything in it--belongs to her. He convinces Michael to come with him to a motherhouse the Talamasca has in Metairie, where he is given a file to read on the Mayfair Witches.

Back in San Francisco, Rowan is awakened by a presence. She finds a man standing on the dock who dims away. In the morning, Rowan receives a call from Carlotta Mayfair. Miss Carl is unaware that Rowan's adoptive mother is deceased and has to notify her niece that her birth mother Deirdre passed away that morning. She warns Rowan to avoid New Orleans at all costs. The doctor ignores her. Michael makes progress on the file of the Mayfair Witches, which goes back twelve generations and spans Scotland, France and New Orleans in an orgy of persecution, personal fortune, and madness, with "that man," who goes by the name Lasher, waiting in the wings.

Though Deirdre has slumbered in a twilight induced by drugs all of her adult life, there have been countless sightings by those around her of "a mysterious brown-haired man." Nurses in St. Ann's Asylum claimed to have seen him--"some man going into her room! Now I know I saw that." At a Texas hospital where she was incarcerated briefly, a doctor claimed to have seen "a mysterious visitor" who always "seemed somehow to just disappear when I wanted to question him or ask him who he was."

At least one nurse in a northern Louisiana sanitarium insisted to her superiors that she had seen a ghost. Black orderlies in various hospitals saw "that man all the time." One woman told us, "He not human. I know him when I see him. I see spirits. I call them up. I know him and he know me and he don't come near me at all."

Most workmen cannot work on the First Street house any more today than they could in the days when Deirdre was a girl. There are the same old stories. There is even some talk of "a man around here" who doesn't want things done.

The strengths of The Witching Hour and part of what has driven Anne Rice up the bestseller's charts over the years is her command of prose while trafficking in the supernatural and the sensual. Her attention to detail--whether it's describing a witch burning in the 17th century or a crumbling Irish Catholic church in the present--is so good. Rather than ride a marketable genre to its obvious and boring conclusions, Rice paints vivid pictures of places and people. She knows cities. She knows Catholicism. I liked how a family owned funeral parlor in New Orleans knows where all the bodies are buried and keep quiet about more than they'll ever reveal, and this is one minor character.

I loved how Rice's characters who've come in close contact with the Mayfair witches are suffering from the same trauma as a motorist buzzed by a UFO; they've experienced something they can't explain and want answers. In another excellent stroke, Rice stumbles onto the conceit of renovating a haunted house, confident enough to cite novels about great houses like Great Expectations or Rebecca by name and in addition to crafting home design porn that matches her skin porn, raises compelling questions about whether new tenants and new fixtures are enough to drive out bad energy hovering around an old house.

The problem with The Witching Hour is that it's two stories: a back story about witches that's exciting and a front story about modern lovers that's lame. Rice doesn't like Rowan Mayfair much--the author's sympathies lie with her tragic men while her women seem to be asking for whatever misfortune is visited on them--and the neurosurgeon has a cunning that felt robotic to me. Rowan and Michael do spend a lot of time crying, but the machinery of their romance made me want to get back to the flesh and blood of the witches. And 327,360 words is too damn long. Rosemary's Baby had a far more compelling story and characters trapped in a web of black magic and deceit and at 79,360 words, can be read in a quarter of the time.

Rowan Mayfair

Rowan Mayfair, born November 7 1959, is the 13th witch of the Mayfair clan. She is the main character of the novel The Witching Hour which takes place in the series Lives of the Mayfair Witches. She is a neurosurgeon. [1] (She is a POV character in the novels for some chapters.)

These illustrations showcase the characters' strength and the mystical world they inhabit. Another popular aspect of fan art is the representation of the unique settings in the Mayfair Witches series. New Orleans, with its vibrant culture and rich history, is often depicted in these artworks. Artists capture the essence of the city, showcasing its iconic landmarks, like the French Quarter and Saint Louis Cathedral. They also incorporate elements of voodoo and witchcraft, highlighting the mystical and occult nature of the series. The Mayfair Witches fan art community is a thriving and active community, with artists regularly sharing their creations online. Social media platforms, such as Instagram and Tumblr, serve as popular spaces for artists to showcase their artwork and connect with fellow fans. Fan art contests and challenges are also organized, encouraging artists to create and share their interpretations of the series. Mayfair Witches fan art not only pays tribute to Anne Rice's beloved series but also allows fans to engage with and explore the world of the Mayfair witches in a visual medium. It celebrates the creativity and talent of the fandom, while also inspiring others to delve deeper into the enchanting universe created by Rice..

Reviews for "Sorcery in Still Images: A Showcase of Mayfair Witches Fan Art"

1. Jane - 1 out of 5 stars - The fan art for the Mayfair witches is simply not up to par. There is a lack of attention to detail and the overall drawing style is clumsy and amateurish. The characters lack any depth or resemblance to their descriptions in the books. It feels like the artist didn't bother to do any research or understand the essence of the characters. Overall, I was extremely disappointed with the fan art and would not recommend it to any fans of the Mayfair witches series.

2. Mark - 2 out of 5 stars - As a fan of the Mayfair witches series, I was looking forward to seeing some amazing fan art. Unfortunately, the reality was quite disappointing. While some of the drawings showed potential, many of them were poorly executed and lacked the finesse I was hoping for. The proportions were often off, and the colors seemed dull and lifeless. It's a shame because I feel like there was potential, but overall, the fan art just didn't capture the magic and beauty of the Mayfair world.

3. Sarah - 2 out of 5 stars - I was excited to find some fan art of the Mayfair witches as I'm a huge fan of the series. However, I found the fan art to be underwhelming. The drawings lacked the emotion and complexity that the characters deserve. They appeared rushed and lacking attention to detail. It felt like the artist didn't take the time to truly understand the essence of the Mayfair witches and their unique personalities. Overall, the fan art was a missed opportunity to bring the characters to life in a captivating and visually stunning way.

4. Robert - 1 out of 5 stars - The Mayfair witches fan art was a disappointment. The drawings lacked any sense of creativity or originality. They felt like generic interpretations of the characters, with no unique style or flair. The color choices were bland, and the compositions were dull and unimaginative. It's a shame because the Mayfair witches series is full of vibrant and intriguing characters, but the fan art failed to capture their essence or inspire any excitement. I would recommend looking elsewhere for quality fan art of the Mayfair witches.

5. Lisa - 2 out of 5 stars - I was hoping to find some stunning fan art of the Mayfair witches to adorn my walls, but unfortunately, what I found was far from impressive. The drawings lacked finesse and appeared rushed and amateurish. The proportions were often off, making the characters look awkward and distorted. The colors used were dull and didn't capture the unique atmosphere of the Mayfair world. Overall, I was left disappointed and would not recommend this fan art to fellow fans of the series.

Mayfair Witches Fan Art: A Portal to a Hauntingly Beautiful World