after many years of delay, i finally started reading and finished anne rice's mayfair witches trilogy. the three books are: "the witching hour", "lasher", and "taltos". once you start to read the first book, you can guess what the next ones are going to be about by the title. but i'm too impatient. i couldn't bear the set-up and would read a brief synopsis on plot and characters now and then. just enough to know some things as a tease, much like a movie trailer.

the reason why i delayed reading these was because years ago i had been reading rice's vampire chronicles. i got to a point where i didn't continue. perhaps it wasn't interesting anymore. knowing that there is some convergence of the two storylines, i didn't want to read on further in the vampire series without reading the witches trilogy. now that i've finished the witches trilogy, i can go to where i left off in the vampires, "merrick". already i see what a wise decision this was to veer off into witches before returning to vampires. there are only small references in "merrick" but it is enough. i understand the whole back story when they mention something brief. i understand much more of the talamasca.

when one reads the vampire chronicles, the talamasca is almost something you hate. but when you read the witches, you love the talamasca. at least that's how it was for me. hell, if it really existed i'd probably join them. if vampires existed maybe i'd be seduced to join them as well. that's just the kind of world that anne rice paints. i don't always like her writing. i definitely am not into the stuffy rich society she seems to favor, and that a lot of pop culture seems to favor.

for the witches, i kept wondering how it would work as a movie. when i was reading the first book, i was thinking that maybe it could be 2 movies. once i was done, i was thinking maybe it could just be 1 long movie. i have a feeling that the filmmakers would opt to slash out all the history that is involved in the books and just deal with the present narrative of roughly 6 months time.

once you finish the witches and go on to reading "merrick", i get the feeling that it's almost as if rice didn't get out all the witches from her system and she wanted to keep on writing about it. only this time she took a different path away from the stuffy rich society and down to what new orleans is more associated with: voodoo.