Some Thoughts on Anne Rice's 'The Feast of All Saints'

...My Anne Rice books, and when I saw this one sitting on the shelf in the bookstore I bought it without reading the synopsis and assumed it would be one of the Mayfair or vampire chronicles. Needless to say I was a bit surprised to find the book set in New Orleans whilst the civil war goes on elsewhere...Or has just finished - I'm still not really sure, and I guess that's why I felt moved enough to write about it.

I love the stories she weaves, I love that the Vampire world is so thought out and overarching in its plot, that each of them come and go from each others lives and their entrances and exits are marked not just in each characters story, but in other characters stories too. It's intricate, it's well thought out, and in my opinion the only two who do it better are Pratchett and Martin. The invention of the world of the Vampires - and even the world of the Mayfair witches is fabulously well done - so why then, could I not picture New Orleans, could I get to the end of the book and not really know whether or not the state was at war still, or whether the war was over and this was the after effects...I'm not sure, I can only surmise that this is a book written about the history of America by an American, and as a foreigner (albeit still a westerner) reading it and having no prior knowledge of the civil war I found it hard to understand what was happening in the characters background.

As to the plot whilst I found the racial conflict enlightening (In Scotland outright racism is few and far between in my area, and I have never encountered so strongly the shocking thought that someone might actually die for being a different color than anyone else,) I didn't really feel that it went anywhere. It did show me a whole world that I knew nothing about on the skin-color stakes, and I have to say I found it horrific. I am of the open minded bunch who believe that there is only one race - the Human Race - and it had never been made so blunt to me before the ignorance of people who believe that skin color matters. My mother taught me that other people had darker skin than I because they came from countries where the sun was stronger and it would stop them being burned. I never questioned it, and I never understood how anyone could truly believe in white supremacy. I think this kind of annoyed me about the book...She set the scene that the white people were in charge - almost like an aristocracy - but as an outsider to the USA I personally don't know how it came to be that way in the first place. I think I might have liked a bit more explanation on that front.

As usual of course, the characters were quite flawless - not in an 'everyone who lives in this town is perfect' kind of way, but in a well rounded, nicely balanced, individual kind of way. By the end it seemed that the plot had kind of dwindled; with only one piece of excitement prior to the end that is not really dwelt on. The one whom I had assumed was the main character was left to go off into the world on his own with seemingly no future bar from hope. I liked this and I didn't like this...Mainly because it reflects the emergence of the character into adulthood and that vague, horrible wonderment of 'what the hell am I going to do with my life?', but I didn't like it in that it seemed a stale ending. Not an up note, not a down note, just an ending. In my honest opinion she can, and has, done better.

One last thing I wanted to mention and that was the publishing quality and editing. I don't know about everyone else's copies but mines was full to the brim of double printed letters and spelling mistakes. Then I had a particular paragraph about six lines long with about ten comma's in it and it really, really annoyed me. These things should be checked before set in print to make thousands of copies. Also, writers nowadays use the comma too much - it's a pet hate. I think I have been spoiling myself with all the George Martin I've been reading recently!