This post continues my gothic novel reading project. Only 5 more books to go.

I grew up on Anne Rice’s vampires. As an adult I know they’re not the most deep or brilliant novels, but they’re fun and dramatic and I still have fond memories of them. The Witching Hour is very long at over a thousand pages, but still, I thought I was in for an easy read and a fun trip down memory lane.

What I actually got was much more ambitious and much more horribly written than I expected.

The Witching Hour tells the story of the Mayfair family and of the Talamasca, a mysterious organization that studies and spies on them. The story spans centuries, following generation after generation of Mayfairs and the agents who spy on them. It also zooms in for a close view of Rowan Mayfair as she becomes the heir to the Mayfair legacy, which includes billions of dollars and a mysterious spiritual companion named Lasher. There are so many elements of great story here–colorful characters down the generations, mysteries and betrayals, strange witchy powers and burning questions about the Talamasca and its motives. It all leads up to a dramatic and fairly horrific ending that I really enjoyed.

Still, even with all this going for it, The Witching Hour was the most agonizingly boring book I’ve read in years. It’s full of little side stories that are neither exciting nor important. The main story centers around a single line of witches, one per generation, but instead of bringing these characters to life Rice wastes page after page describing scullery maids and distant cousins and detectives hired by the Talamasca. The main characters often get lost in this mess of details. It’s also extremely repetitive–a character will see something spooky, then call up a friend and describe the spooky thing they saw, then that friend will write about that spooky thing in his notes, then they’ll talk about whether to tell yet another character about the spooky thing . . . and by the time they’re all done talking about it nothing seems spooky at all. This book needed serious, serious editing. You could easily cut two or three hundred pages and have a tighter, more exciting story with plenty of gothic flavor left.

I wanted to love this book. It should have been, could have been a grand and sweeping gothic drama but it was so unfocused and weighed down with distracting little side notes that I could never just sit back and enjoy the big picture. All that wasted dramatic potential just made me sad and grumpy. I give it one star.

Before I let you go, I should offer a quick content warning: The Witching Hour contains a fair amount of graphic sexual content, including incest and rape. This book is not for the sensitive reader.

I actually finished this over a week ago, but family visits delayed my review. I’ve already started The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield and so far I’m finding it has all the spooky atmosphere The Witching Hour lacked. I have high hopes for this one.