Reviews with content warning for Rape - L'ora delle streghe

I was enjoying this story until I got to the double whammy of romanticized slavery and erotic incest between father and daughter. I was truly disgusted at how Anne Rice wrote about slavery. Using the excuse of a character in the past and their journals, Rice glorified slave owners simply because they were Mayfair Witches and white washed the traumatic history of an enslaved person’s kidnapped life.

The incest just kept going even up until the end of the book. Glad I just skipped ahead to find out the ending wasn’t worth reading the whole book.

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mr_sosotris's review against another edition

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dark emotional reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

A sweeping tour de force. Ghost story, doomed romance, Southern gothic.

I love how Anne Rice sets up this sweeping tragic, horrifying family history, and leaves the reader wondering just how true any of the gossip and legends surrounding the Mayfairs really is. Questions of free will entwine throughout this massive story, and the reader is left uncertain of what is actually true until the novel’s final moments.

Lasher is a compelling, mysterious figure existing in the background and possibly pulling the strings throughout the centuries, and Rice beautifully weaves a complex tapestry of human drama, populated by fun, tragic, hopeful characters.

I love Rowan and Michael, and I like how each character’s specific strengths and flaws play into how the story plays out. There’s no easy answers, and the mysteries are compelling. I love this book so much!

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tesssiob's review against another edition

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dark mysterious medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.25

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palnic26's review against another edition

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challenging dark mysterious tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

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t_bun's review against another edition

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dark mysterious tense slow-paced

Diverse cast of characters? N/A

2.25

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readwithbells's review against another edition

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challenging dark sad slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.75

Fuck. This book fucked me up. Disturbing and sexy and all-encompassing and fucked up.
I don’t have a lot of words here. Idk who I would recommend this to, I don’t know who else might find this book. I love it. But I am deeply horrified. Rice is the Queen of horror after all. I feel trapped in this world. Ugh.

The reason this doesn’t get 5 stars (even though it probably deserves it) is I had just gotten invested in Michael and Rowan, and then commence 500 pages of the Mayfair family history. I liked the history, I really did, I liked the patterns and the stakes and the story wouldn’t be nearly as eerie and unsettling without it. But Jesus Christ there was so much of it. I can’t get mad at Rice for worldbuilding but omg girl that was a LOT of worldbuilding.

This is all a very dramatic way of saying this book is very good, well-written, horrifying in its horror, so overwhelmingly successful in getting me to care about these characters and hate hate HATE Lasher. Absolutely superb.

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