"Merrick," Anne Rice's latest, is a patchwork of witches, vampires and paranormal investigators. She plucks characters from her other best-selling novels and throws them together in modern day New Orleans for some spell-casting and spirit-calling, blood-sucking and body-possessing.
Perhaps it was inevitable that Rice would bring together her two most-established fictitious worlds - those of The Vampire Chronicles and the Mayfair Witches. They are linked by the Talamasca, an organization of paranormal investigators that has appeared in both series of books. And David Talbot, one such psychic-detective-turned-vampire, seems the natural choice for a narrator.
Except this book isn't about him. It's not exactly about Merrick either, though she gets top billing.
"Merrick," in fact, is about too much. Talbot asks his old friend, the beautiful witch Merrick, to raise the spirit of the dead vampire child Claudia. It's a favor for fellow vampire Louis, whose obsession with Claudia and guilt over her death has nearly driven him over the edge. Merrick agrees, and the expected unexpected ensues.
Then there are Talbot's conversations with Louis, which serve as vehicles to flashback to Merrick's past. The vampires also continue their never-ending philosophical musings on religion, the afterlife and their struggles with immortality.
Rice's other vampires, most notably Lestat and more recently Armand, have the charisma to command a title page and carry a book. Their tales are told as first-person narratives. They seduce the reader as surely as they do their victims.
Merrick is as strong and compelling a character as any of these, and surely takes the lead when given the chance. But her voice is lost, her emotions left unexplored, as Rice instead filters the character through Talbot.
What Talbot tells the reader is that Merrick is a witch, a beauty drunk with both alcohol and magical power. He declares, "I know her tricks. And I know magic. And hers is a magic as old as Egypt, as old as Rome and Greece ... Perhaps a million mortal magicians have lived and died during the past millennia, but how many of them were the genuine article? She knows what she's doing!" This is one of too many speeches about Merrick's uncanny abilities, and Talbot is just as tiresomely emphatic about her attractiveness, which he mentions on nearly every page.
Merrick's ancestry, youth and education are passed over all too quickly. Rice does offer up some interesting scraps from the past. Mysterious relatives such as Oncle Julien, who "could kill his enemies or yours with the look in his eye," and Great Nananne, a voodoo witch. A brief but gripping tale of Merrick's possession by her sister's ghost. Her training in the Talamasca.
Rice could have strung all this together and spun out a full, engaging account of Merrick's history. Instead, she provides enough tidbits to arouse interest in the reader, but disappoints with what is ultimately a cursory treatment.
Fans will recognize Talbot from Rice's other Vampire Chronicles. For those who haven't read her other books, don't worry, it's hard to miss Rice's awkward explanatory passages.
These sections of clumsy prose are a necessary evil, however, as "Merrick" is not a self-contained book and requires background information. The story hinges, in fact, on Louis' desire to see the spirit of the vampire child Claudia, who was introduced and burned to ashes long ago in the first of the series, "Interview with the Vampire."
The characters in "Merrick" are as entangled as always in relationships with each other. Everyone is drawn irresistibly to everyone else. Talbot says of Merrick's first meeting with Louis, "It was undeniable, the fascination with which she stared at Louis. And there was not the slightest question about the overwhelming awe in which he held her ... I could see in her face a provocative expression which up until this time I had never beheld in her except when she was looking at me." And so on.
Despite the excessive eroticism these characters claim to possess, the novel lacks the signature sexiness of Rice's other prose. "Merrick" has none of the sexual tension she describes so well, none of the steamy scenes one expects. The plot is full of attraction and temptation, but somehow lacks the emotional infusion necessary to make it crackle with energy.
Talbot describes his lust for Merrick during all his years as a mortal man. But when they finally find themselves alone in a tent in the steamy jungles of Guatemala, about to consummate a passion that has been building for years, Talbot says, "I was a person for whom sexuality had pretty much lost its appeal ... What is vivid still is that we lay together and that, though I failed myself morally, I did not fail her at all." Not quite fireworks. At least the man's not impotent.
With "Merrick," Rice never hits her stride. The dialogue is stilted and repetitive, and the novel is off balance - too little time on Merrick's rich past, too much time explaining what happened in other books. And along the way the characters swear so insistently about what they will not do, that the reader accepts it as a foregone conclusion. No plot twists here.
The final chapter of "Merrick" is engineered as another beginning, so it might be smarter just to wait for Rice's next installment. After all, it'll probably have the highlights in convenient summary form.
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