The Witching Hour

Yes.

I mean, we, we mentioned earlier in the month that the wi- the central kinda premise of The Witching Hour novel is that Michael Curry has a near-death experience which alters him, which leaves him with a psychic ability that-

That he did not previously-

Yeah

We have a trinity of legendary magical romances to unpack here.

Deborah Harkness' A Discovery of Witches, Anne Rice's The Witching Hour, and Cassandra Clare's City of Bones.

These three works really represent the absolute titans of supernatural world building.

They really do.

And the manuscript, Ashmole 782, acts as a mirror for their own hidden potential.

By uncovering the secrets of the book, Diana uncovers the dormant, terrifying power within herself that she had suppressed just to fit into the mundane academic world.

She basically stops hiding, and, you know, this theme of suppressing terrifying power transitions perfectly into our next book, Anne Rice's The Witching Hour.

The queen of literary mysticism.

It ran on Netflix from 2021 to 2023.

It is based on the incredibly popular Grishaverse novels by Leigh Bardugo, and Hachi states unequivocally that this show was a huge hit for Netflix during its two-season run.

The numbers were great.

The critical reception was stellar.

Exactly.

Now, to contrast Hoffman's quiet, contained domesticity, we have to look at Anne Rice's 1990 maximalist epic, The Witching Hour.

Oh, wow.

Yeah.

If Practical Magic is a quiet kitchen, The Witching Hour is a sprawling, decaying mansion.

It is a massive doorstop of a novel.

Oh, it is a completely different vibe.

First, you have Millennium Comics, another independent publisher.

They stepped up in the mid-90s and started an adaptation of The Witching Hour.

Right.

This was Anne Rice's massive 1990 supernatural novel about a dynasty of witches.

That one got its full 12 issue run.

Well, that's something.

But the damage inflicted by canceling The Witching Hour halfway through was already done.

The fandom was learning a very specific negative lesson.

Very gothic, very scary.

Then we got The Witching Hour, which is the first book in the whole Mayfair Witches series, which is the best of them.

After that, it just gets stupid.

But again, I mean... creepy shit going on um spirits that can touch your body even though you can't see them