Merrick - Softcover

Anne Rice

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0099271486 ISBN 13: 9780099271482

Publisher: Arrow, 2001

Synopsis

The Vampire Armand finished with a tantalising moment - the Vampire Lestat rising from the dead in present-day New Orleans to walk again among Anne Rice's unforgettable undead. Now Lestat lives again but in a twilight world of music and memory. In this volume it is his mesmerizing friend and coeval Louis de Pointe du Lac (originating in 18th century France and Interview with the Vampire) who is tortured by the memory of the child vampire, Claudia, whom he loved and lost. With the help of David Talbot, vampire and ultimate fixer from the secret Talamasca organisation, Louis calls on the help of Merrick, young and gorgeous mixed-race by-blow of the rich New Orleans Mayfair clan. To save Louis' sanity, Merrick must use her black witchcraft to call up the ghost of Claudia - however dangerous this may be. There are other Mayfair spirits who will not lie still, and her search takes her close to the edge, through blood and terror, ritual and violence. Sweeping from New Orleans to the Brazilian jungle and the island of Haiti, this is vampire literature at its most tantalising, sexy and irresistible.

About this title

Review

Just when you thought it was safe for a bloodsucker to go out in the dark in New Orleans, along comes Merrick Mayfair, a sultry, hard-drinking octoroon beauty whose voodoo can turn the toughest vampire into a marionette dancing to her merry, scary tune. In Merrick, Anne Rice brings back three of her most wildly popular characters--the vampires Lestat and Louis and the dead vampire child Claudia--and introduces them to the world of her Mayfair Witches book series.

It is Louis who brings about the collision of the fang and voodoo universes. Louis made Claudia a vampire in Rice's classic Interview with the Vampire, in which she was destroyed, and now he's obsessed with raising her ghost to make amends and seek guidance from the beyond. (Claudia physically resembles Rice's young daughter who died of a blood-related illness. Rice nearly died of a diabetic coma in 1998, and writing Merrick turned her excruciating recovery into an exhilarating burst of creativity).

Vampire David Talbot lobbies Merrick to call Claudia's spirit and slake Louis's guilt, but Talbot winds up in the grip of an obsession with the witch. You see, Talbot, unlike most vampires, lived 70 years as a human, so his sexual response to humans is still as strong as his blood thirst. Merrick can cast spells to make men crave her, and Talbot is tormented. After she reads his palm, he muses, "I wanted to take her in my arms, not to feed from her, no, not harm her, only kiss her, only sink my fangs a very little, only taste her blood and her secrets, but this was dreadful and I wouldn't let it go on."

The secrets of Merrick are dark and sensuous, but the book is a romp animated by Rice's feeling of coming back to life through the magic of a literary outpouring. The narrative flashes back to the past, to an Indiana Jones-ish adventure in a Guatemalan cave, and to scenes from many other Rice novels. It may be helpful to read Merrick with the Rice-approved guidebooks The Vampire Companion and The Witches' Companion at hand.

After many books, Rice's grand Vampire Chronicles tale was in peril of getting long in the tooth. Merrick Mayfair's magic represents an infusion of fresh blood. --Tim Appelo

From the Publisher

7 1.5-hour cassettes

Edition details

• Publisher: Arrow
• Publication date: 2001
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0099271486
• ISBN 13: 9780099271482
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 480