After another long gap, I thought I'll put up something here so you can kill time waiting for someone familiar to show up so you can chat with them. You could thank a college festival and Anne Rice for the delay. The fest was fantastic,with me and my chums having a blast all the time along, with a lot of hard work put in. On my fest, another time..
Here I am, to criticize a novel I am yet to finish reading. Now, I am not being judgmental. My focus now is going to be on the writing style. The book in question is The Witching Hour by Anne Rice. I had tried reading another one of her works, the Vampire Lestat, before this. And an honest confession, its one of the few books which I have put down without completely reading. I found it very long, dragging and dull. But since I haven't read it properly, not making comments on it.
The Witching Hour started off on a similar note. With four stories running parallel to one another, in the first four chapters itself, I was left dazed and confused as to what was going on. And thanks to my lately developed patience, I did manage to read further than that. The strategy is good, but its dragging and confusing to someone who isn't used to the style. So back to the book, I continued on and on. By open windows during the day and the bright fluorescent white light at night, I managed to get over my confusion and discovered the underlying brilliant plot. My opinion here is, one could easily just cast the books aside, and never reach the point where it gets interesting.
Secondly, her characters are all very complex. And Rice's way of explaining her characters is by going deep into their history, veryrich in details, many irrelevant to the plot. This makes it wearisome for the reader. It thus becomes like a poor man, out of desperation, continuously removing muck from a hug pile, for a copper coin hidden somewhere. Is it worth it?
Lastly, her characters seem to be very passionate. Her language brings in a lot of sensuality to the story. The words are captivating and give pleasure when one reads them. And in this context, unless one is completely immune to the attraction these hold, its easy to get swept away by the charisma of the silky words. This, I presume, is what keeps the readers hooked on to the plot. My complaint is, that if the steamy scenes were to be removed, the book might be a little more than half its current size. Also, I found it unnecessary, the highlights on the physical passion of the characters. It forms a source of distraction against the main plot.
And with around a few of chapters left, I can even predict the end, which isn't good for an author whose climax is a suspense, is it?
All in all, I give her writing a 2.5/5, for the creative plot and brilliant imagination. Ratings are cut down because of lengthy details and unnecessary physical descriptions.
