Last year, AMC snapped up the rights to a whole lot of Anne Rice novels, and they’re wasting no time getting two of the author’s best-known works into TV development. The network greenlit an Interview With the Vampire series—the start of an extended Vampire Chronicles universe—in June, and last week it announced that Sam Reid will play Lestat.
Now, wheels are turning for Rice’s Lives of the Mayfair Witches series. Variety reports that AMC has opened a writers’ room for the adaptation, which will “focus on an intuitive young neurosurgeon who discovers that she is the unlikely heir to a family of witches.”
The first book of the Mayfair Witches series, The Witching Hour, is a fat, somewhat daunting tome—and one of Rice’s most engrossing reads. The book’s dramatic cover copy explains:
Demonstrating once again her gift for spellbinding storytelling, Anne Rice makes real for us a great dynasty of four centuries of witches—a family given to poetry and incest, murder and philosophy, a family that over the ages is itself haunted by a powerful, dangerous, and seductive being called Lasher who haunts the Mayfair women.
Moving in time from today’s New Orleans and San Francisco to long-ago Amsterdam and the France of Louis XIV, from the coffee plantations of Port-au-Prince to Civil War New Orleans and back to today, Anne Rice has spun a mesmerizing tale that challenges everything we believe in.
First published in 1990, The Witching Hour was followed by Lasher in 1993 and Taltos in 1994. There is crossover between Rice’s Witches and Vampire series, especially in later Vampire Chronicles novels, which gives AMC plenty of material to mine for its vampiric universe.
AMC’s adaptation has two writer/executive producers on board, Esta Spaulding and Michelle Ashford (who is also writing the screenplay based on the viral short story “Cat Person”). If the show gets picked up, Spalding will be its showrunner. Her resume is light on SFF fare, but full of experience producing well-regarded dramas, including Masters of Sex and On Becoming a God in Central Florida.
No other details have been announced, but given the speed with which AMC’s moving on Interview With the Vampire, it might not be long before this one gets greenlit as well. So, who should play Rowan Mayfair?
@bill:
I too wondered why after Kallor practically shouted at him that he’s going to betray him and Brood obvious distrust he still let him go. Maybe Brood simply thought kallor didn’t have the guts to betray him.
I see Brood as being a kind of idiot savant: brilliant general and tactician, but outside the field of battle, not exactly a high-wattage bulb.
And I don’t understand why Brood and the Malazans are keeping all these plans secret from each other. Simply trust issues? I can’t think of any good reason, besides plot. Though people keeping secrets for no apparent good reason seems to be another theme of this book.
Amanda:
I just want to take a pause here and say how good I think Erikson’s character names are. They are memorable, easy to say (in the most part), not too many apostrophes, and help to evince the spirit of the different cultures. It occurred to me as I read this line, “Paran sat with Quick Ben, Spindle, Shank, Toes and Bluepearl.” None of the names made me scoff at all, and, for me, that is a fairly unique situation in a fantasy novel! What do you think about Erikson’s names? Do you like the way he does them?
In the case of the soldiers names, I would have to say that they are a direct hommage to Glen Cook´s The Black Company, from where SE lifted this naming system.
Interesting that this system of short names/nicks makes perfect sense; if you want to coordinate actions in the middle of a heated battle, you need short, pregnant names to be concise and get through to people
So many things to comment on here (love it!):
1) Amanda, I too am almost always impressed by Erikson’s choice of names, and, moreover, the continuity in the sounds of these names. After a while in this series, you can pretty much identify a character’s origin by the type of name they possess. For instance in this book, the Grey Swords have strong-sounding, ‘k-filled’ names, often with some form of ‘ian’ at the end – Itkovian, Brukhalian, Karnadas, Tanakalian, etc.
2) My suspicion is that the rose-tinted view of the Malazan Empire isn’t Whiskeyjack’s, it’s Erikson’s. This isn’t the first, or the last, time in which the Empire is described in a ‘force for good’ type of way. Sure, they brutally conquer, but once order is asserted and laws are put in place, everyone is free to carry on as they were – no imposition of outside culture, no back-breaking taxes- so long as they don’t break the few laws the Malazans to impose.
So, freedom, so long as you behave in the way we want you to behave. You can begin to understand why Seven Cities did rebel despite being better off under the Malazans – this notion of ‘true freedom’, which quickly and horribly descended into chaos and savagery.
3) Those sneaky Malazans! I didn’t buy Whiskeyjack’s explanation that they went ahead purely to negate any pre-emptive defences of the Pannions in my first read, and I sure don’t now :) What else are those dastardly and not-so-outlawed Malazans up to now?
4) On the other hand, I do like this twist which SE added – on what seems the cusp of victory, one more battle, the alliance is shakier than it has ever been. And both sides are making fatal errors – the Malazans simply don’t have the forces to achieve what they intend, but what choice do they have? And now they’ve left most of the Barghast behind. And Brood, as we’ve seen before, can let his emotions rule him at times.
5) As for Korlat’s musings on Rake….well, how about this alternative controversial idea? Rake does what he does out of a sense of profound guilt. After all, why are the Tiste Andii no longer in Kurald Galain? Why is Mother Dark ‘turned away?’ We’ll get a lot more in this in the next book, which has musings throughout on the history of Light, Dark, and Shadow.
6) I love the scene of Kallor standing in the torrential rain, spying the trickle of muddy water moving *upstream*, and recognising it for what it is. Canny bastard :) And the scene in Brood’s tent after, with the exchange that we first read as an chapter-opening quote in Gardens of the Moon :)
As for the T’lan Imass, I think it’s clear no one but Kallor has realised they are still moving with the armies. As for the reason for this, well, I think one can lay blame once again at the feet of Silverfox’s infuriating secretiveness. She clearly believes despite all the evidence thrown in her face that any business of the T’lan Imass is consequently no one else’s business.
7) The scene with the munitions and oil burning alive the Pannion forces and Paran’s thoughts on its awfulness will gain a grim, grim reflection in the Bonehunters.
@@@@@ 2
If you think forward to what happens immediately after the battle of Coral (i.e. who shows up) the Malazans’ intentions and reasons for keeping their plans secret become clear.
As for Brood, I think he genuinelly doesn’t know what exactly Rake intends with Moon’s Spawn, but after all these centuries has learned to trust his judgement.
@5: Good to know. It’s been a few years since I last read these first books, and I’ve definitely forgotten most of the details.
Jordanes@@.-@: We’re told about the Malazan Empire as a force for good that way several times, but I’m not recalling being shown it in any way that seems intended to convince us it’s a good thing, so I can buy the occurrences you mention as Erikson illustrating character idealism to which his world does not live up. If anything, I think Erikson has whatever the opposite of a rose-tinted view is, here; the series as a whole strikes me as extremely sceptical of the capacity of authority to do much of anything positive competently at all.
Paran did see some munition use when the Bridgeburners stormed their way into Capustan (through a company of Pannions) a few chapters back. But that was relatively mild compared to the action in this chapter.
Bill:
I confess Amanda, I do not know why the Imass seem to be traveling
secretly alongside the army. Or at least, it makes sense why they are
traveling secretly (so as not to tip their presence to the Seer), but
why seemingly secretly from Brood’s army. Though perhaps at this point the reader might think Brood knows but isn’t telling Kallor. Why, however, there is no discussion of the T’lan Imass going with the
Malazans (or even ahead of them) I’m not sure.
I can think of 2 reasons: logistics and morale.
There is only so much room to march, I’d guess, and this allows the T’lan Imass to travel the same road as the main part of Brood’s army (just slightly deeper).
As for morale, Silverfox and the T’lan Imass at this stage have only committed to battling the Undead K’Chain Che’malle. If I were Brood, Dujek or Whiskeyjack, I’d prefer them to show up when they are willing to fight, instead of standing and looking dusty instead when they are not committed…
re Paran & munitions: He was also in the neighbourhood when Hedge took out Raest.
re secrets between the armies: It is weeks not years since they were at each other’s throats.
I love this reread!