Review: All Souls' Rising

All Souls' Rising by Madison Smartt Bell

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Perfect balance of character/story/setting, this is a book that tackles a big event (Haitian slave rebellion) and brings it down to a very human size. The story is told through all the various points of view that brought about an incredibly bloody and deadly event, which in a lesser writer's hand would feel like padding. But Bell takes the time to let each character not only establish their link to history, he also makes them three dimensional enough that even the "villains" of the story have their sympathetic moments. In light of how the current nation of Haiti is so often in the news, this is a timely and very good background read.



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