Merrick

Like 'Pandora', this tale does not contribute much to the overall vampire world, but is a good read in its own right, with Vampires and Mayfair Witches, but not too much from either as much of the story is Merrick's own, from before soe joined the Talamasca, which was interesting because I was curious if the Talamasca would make another appearance. While not as solid as earlier Vampire Chronicles, Merrick is a interesting character and the story was a lot of fun to read. 3.5/5 stars.

I picked up MERRICK, officially the 7th book in Anne Rice’s Vampire Chronicles, with some high expectations, mainly because I have just waded through her three epics about the Mayfair witches, and I was looking forward to getting back to her blood suckers, a group I much prefer. I found the Mayfair series to be consistently overwritten, and often sluggish, heavy laden with detail and back story, causing the reader to plow through a lot of pages in order to get to the story. I am no prude, but much of the sexual content of the Mayfair books left a bad taste. So, if I was happy to again be in the company of Lestat and his fellow blood drinkers, it came with some trepidation, because MERRICK was a crossover, where Rice’s two fictional show more worlds, one of witches, the other, of vampires, would meet.

On the plus side, at just under 400 pages, MERRICK is a relatively quick read, and mercifully free of the excessive verbal padding that made the Mayfair books so long. But that doesn’t mean we do not get a couple of chapters where someone sits around and recounts a long adventure from the past, giving us a ton of back story. This is one of Rice’s most reliable tropes. I’m sure I was not the only one who was disappointed that Lestat was not front and center in this book, and that he didn’t interact with Rowan Mayfair, the central character of the other series. The main POV character in MERRICK is David Talbot, the former elderly member of the Talamasca whose soul now resides in the body of a youthful vampire. David has been a prominent supporting character in most of the recent Vampire Chronicle volumes. The other principles are the angst and guilt ridden Louis, the POV character from the original INTERVIEW WITH THE VAMPIRE, and Merrick Mayfair, a biracial member of the witching clan, and a powerful witch in her own right. Merrick, who has little or no contact with the rest of the extended family, has been a member of the Talamasca (secret group of observers and documenters of the supernatural) since her early years, having been recruited by the then still human David. The plot turns on Louis, who is desperate to contact the spirit of Claudia, the vampire child sired by Lestat back in the antebellum South, whom he loved, and conspired with against their maker. As faithful Rice readers know, Claudia came to a bad end, and Louis wants to know if she is at rest, or in torment as an earthbound spirit. David turns to Merrick for help with Louis’s problem, and she is more than happy to oblige them. But does Merrick have her own agenda, and is she manipulating both vampires for her own ends?

MERRICK is heavy on creepy atmosphere, there are severed limbs, and plenty of blood; Rice is always on a sure footing when New Orleans is the setting for a book, and this one has a great side trip to the Mayan temples in Central America, where the spirits abound. I liked the sight of Louis besotted with Merrick like a love sick puppy, a real, and welcome departure for the whining vampire of previous books, even if it is not through honest means. But for a book featuring vampires, witches, and ghosts, I expected more, and I thought the last 50 pages were building toward a gut punch of an ending, something Rice has done well in other books, only to be let down. As usual, Anne Rice never meets an adjective she doesn’t love, and we get detailed descriptions of homes, furniture, and clothes, not to mention constant reminders of the physical beauty of all these supernatural creatures. Lestat does show up late in the book, but I think at the time she wrote this (the late ‘90s), Rice was kind of out of gas when it came to her most favorite creation.

All in all, I found MERRICK to be a decent potboiler, one that didn’t always exploit some of the elements of its plot more fully – I would have liked to see more of ghost Claudia. A lot of reviewers either loved the book, or hated it, but I come down solid in the middle. It helps a lot if you were a big fan of both Anne Rice’s vampire books and the Mayfair witches. Anyway, I am going to progress onward to the next installment in the Vampire Chronicles. Hopefully, we’ll get that long promised TV adaptation sometime soon. show less

Amazon.com
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 show more 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 show less

At Louis’ request David gets back in touch with Merrick Mayfair, a powerful witch and member of the Talamasca. He has known her since she joined the order as a child and knows her long, powerful and often frightening history.

But that history may be why she can do what Louis needs and call on Claudia’s ghost to confirm for him whether the child vampire has reached a peaceful afterlife or suffers as a ghost. And David’s connection to Merrick may be why she’d want to do it.

Though Merrick may be playing her own game

So, Louis wants to get in touch with Claudia’s ghost because the angst monster needs fuel for his eternal mope. To do this he contacts David who in turn calls on a contact he has in the Talamasca, Merrick.

And then tells show more us her life story in excruciating detail

I think it’s a good thing vampires don’t eat, because every time they ordered a pizza they’d have to pause to have an epic monologue on the delivery boy’s history. I’d actually be wary of working with these vampires simply because if you do anything for them they demand a full biography – which they then apparently put into print and share with the world. It’s one of the unknown vampire afflictions – can’t go out in the sunlight, blood diet and compulsive biography writing. Honestly, I do not even remotely understand the need to tell extremely long, irrelevant back stories to characters that we know nothing about and have little, or no, reason to care about.

I need an aside on the Talamasca – since I’ve previously called them the Talastalkers. Their motto is “We watch and we’re always there.” I presume this is because “We Know Where you Live and Where Your Children Go to School” and “We’re In The House!” were both already taken.

When I first saw that David was the narrator of this I celebrated. For a brief, deeply frightening moment, I thought Louis was going to be the POV and we would have lots of whining. At least David doesn’t whine… oh how wrong I was. No, because now David has thrown his hat in the ring – he too will compete for the title of whiniest one of all!

Between the moping, excessive descriptions and unnecessary art references (honestly, I do not understand authors who try to shoe-horn in these references to show us how knowledgeable they are) there was a surprising lack of philosophising to a degree. But it does seem that everything Lestat learned and we endured during Memnoch the Devil has been forgotten. There was even one interesting philosophical point of Louis refusing to upgrade his power level, even if he would then not have to kill so often, because that way he is capable of suicide, capable of dying which inherently makes him more human than, say, Lestat or David who wouldn’t know how to kill themselves even if they tried.

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Bought at work from the 10p bookswap shelves - the only way I can bring myself to read any of AR's books, and even then I'm regretting it already. Several years back I deaccessioned all of the Rice books on my shelves; they'd gone from being a fun read to a guilty pleasure to one that made me feel more nauseous than guilty. I only bought this one because, I dunno, I'm short of books to read due to lots of ours having been in storage for ages, and why not give this a go, can't be all that bad, can it?

It's not all that bad, no, but it isn't well written. In its defence, I liked the face that the kind of magic brought into this story was specifically American-continent - Brazilian Candomblé, Mesoamerican Mayan shamanism. But she doesn't show more do anything with it, once she's got a couple of exciting scenes out of the way, and achieved a MacGuffin. I also rather liked (as well as being a bit annoyed by) the uncertainty of whether the central witch character was going to end up having a negative effect despite the positive spin she was given from the start - a bit like Rowan Mayfair having been set up as the main heroine but actually bringing disaster to her nearest and dearest. The actual ending was pants though. show less

Rating: 4.5 stars

I really enjoyed Merrick. It's part of the Vampire Chronicles series and it focuses on the history between David Talbot and a witch named Merrick. The history is all background story of course in the fashion that Anne Rice often does in her books, but the main plot of the story is that Louis wants to contact Claudia's ghost and David gets in touch with the witch Merrick to request that she use her magic to do this. Personally I found the background story more interesting than the actual main plot. This book does involve the Mayfair witches so if you have any interest in reading the trilogy about the Mayfair witches, you should probably read them before you read this book.