been so constructed that they hardly for a moment live or breathe except as structural elements serving specific design functions in the grand scheme." According to Publishers Weekly, "This massive tome repeatedly slows, then speeds when Rice casts off the Talamasca's pretentious, scholarly tones and goes for the jugular with morbid delights, sexually charged passages and wicked, wild tragedy." Susan Ferraro of The New York Times called the novel "unquestionably absorbing" but noted, "At the end, it seems to stumble ... because the fiercely protective Michael does something completely out of character to make way for the denouement; ultimately what creaks loudest is not the haunted house but the plot." Lasher (1993) Lasher by is the second novel in Rice's Lives of the Mayfair Witches trilogy. It was published by Knopf in 1993. Plot Rowan has disappeared and Michael, feeling betrayed by her, has sunk into a depression, helped along by the useless drugs prescribed to him after his near-drowning. The sexually adventurous Mona Mayfair, a precocious teenage cousin also descended from Julien, is a powerful witch. She seduces Michael, who snaps out of his stupor and commits himself to finding Rowan, who he is now convinced did not leave willingly. Rowan, meanwhile, is essentially Lasher's prisoner. His first two attempts at impregnating her are failures ending in miscarriage, but he is successful the third time. Traveling with Lasher throughout Europe, Rowan manages to send DNA samples to colleagues in San Francisco. They discover that Lasher is a completely different species, later identified as a Taltos. Rowan herself has a genetic abnormality, polyploidy, or 92 chromosomes, which is probably what made Lasher's quasi-supernatural birth at all possible in the first place. In the past, Julien finds himself to be the only known male Mayfair witch, and learns how to manipulate the spirit Lasher. Julien impregnates numerous Mayfair women as part of Lasher's scheme of inbreeding, which Julien believes is a means to keep power in the family but is actually the way by which Lasher hopes to resurrect himself in flesh. Rowan returns to America with Lasher, who sets out to impregnate other female members of the Mayfair family. All attempts are unsuccessful as the women immediately miscarry and hemorrhage to death. Rowan manages to escape Lasher, and after hitchhiking to Louisiana, she collapses in a field and gives birth to Emaleth, a female Taltos. Rowan's last words to Emaleth