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3.8 AVERAGE
3.8 AVERAGE
I'm sorry but I usually don't like to bash books or authors but this was completely unreadable to me. 150 pages took me a lifetime to get through and I had no interest in the supposedly connected threads of this story. The book darts back and forth between characters and time periods without mention and following it isn't worth the time. I haven't read any other Rice novels but have heard good things so I'll still try them but this was dreadful.
It was recommended by a friend who read it many years ago… apparently she forgot about the pedophilia and incest
This was great then 700 pages of monotonous bullshittery, and then ok at the end... 3.5 overall
This is the story of the Mayfair witches. Strong female characters who pass their unique powers to females in each generation. Eloquent, sensual, suspenseful, historical, paranormal, and romantic. It has it all. As one review put it, "The Witching Hour unfolds like a poisonous lotus blossom redolent with luxurious evil." Multiple story lines across generations.
dark
mysterious
sad
tense
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
challenging
dark
mysterious
sad
tense
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
this book is NUTS is the first thing I will say. It took me a while to get into it because AR loves her extremely descriptive narrative so the pace was very slow. It gets better as the book goes on but it nonetheless slows down at moments. The ending was not what I expected (or maybe I saw it coming and convinced myself it would end differently to retain my sanity). I might venture to say that the characters were doomed by the narrative, and I’m still figuring out how I feel about that. A couple things that I found interesting about the novel were the File on the Mayfair Witches, and also the ambiguity of some events and character’s intentions. My interpretations and predictions changed throughout as I kept on reading, so that was fun! I am so, so mad at the ending but I’ll continue to read the trilogy because I’m a completionist and I would like to see this absolute mess come to an end (if it ever does?).
challenging
dark
emotional
informative
mysterious
reflective
tense
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
I don't know what to rate this (between 2 or 3 stars), so I'm not going to, at least not right now. It ranges so wildly from being interesting to boring, from being engaging gothic horror to being excessively unsettling in its descriptions of sexual violence. It is effectively scary, but it is also often gross, for lack of a better word. It is overly long; it sincerely needed an editor, but it has interesting ideas threaded through all of it. The book overall is a tangled contradiction in that sense even if I still enjoy how Anne Rice writes and felt absorbed by the world and disturbing family history she created here.
The biggest thing I got out of it was seeing the patterns in Anne Rice's writing that carry over from her Vampire Chronicles books and seeing the themes and ideas she obsesses with and approaches again and again in slightly different ways. I'm glad I read it, but I don't think it is one I would recommend to most people.
The biggest thing I got out of it was seeing the patterns in Anne Rice's writing that carry over from her Vampire Chronicles books and seeing the themes and ideas she obsesses with and approaches again and again in slightly different ways. I'm glad I read it, but I don't think it is one I would recommend to most people.