Lasher was published by Alfred A. Knopf in 1993 as the second volume of the Lives of the Mayfair Witches trilogy. The novel picks up where The Witching Hour ended: Lasher, the spirit who haunted the Mayfair family for thirteen generations, has achieved his goal of incarnation. Born through Rowan Mayfair — in a birth that nearly kills her — Lasher is now a physical being: tall, beautiful, androgynous, possessing the accumulated memories of centuries.
But incarnation has not satisfied Lasher; it has made him desperate. He is a Taltos — a member of an ancient, nearly extinct humanoid species that predates modern humans — and he needs to reproduce with a genetically compatible Mayfair woman to perpetuate his kind. The novel follows his increasingly violent attempts to find a suitable mate while Rowan, recovering from the trauma of his birth, and Michael Curry (her husband, introduced in The Witching Hour) attempt to understand and stop him.
Rice uses Lasher’s backstory — revealed in extended historical flashbacks — to explore the mythology of the Taltos: a gentle, long-lived species that was hunted and destroyed by early humans. The historical sections span from prehistoric Britain through medieval Scotland to colonial Saint-Domingue, and they give Lasher a tragic dimension: he is not simply a monster but a survivor of genocide, the last representative of a destroyed people. The tension between sympathy and horror — Lasher’s suffering is real, but his methods are monstrous — is characteristic of Rice’s moral universe, where villains are never simply evil.
Collecting Lasher
First edition (Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 1993): Hardcover with dust jacket.
Market values:
- First edition, fine/fine: $20–$50
- Very good: $10–$25