Review: The Feast of All Souls

The Feast of All Souls by Simon Bestwick
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

First - thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for providing me a copy in exchange for an honest review.

I'm not entirely sure where to start on this one. It was a decent story, with some great characters and a nice creepy vibe all the way through. I think I just didn't like how convoluted it got. It was trying to tie so many mythologies into the explanation, and it never really did a great job explaining how the creepy supernatural weirdness actually caused what it did. The children were strictly there to be part of the horror vibe, and the resolution with that part of the story was very lackluster and unfulfilling. The big twist about the villain wasn't really hard to see coming -- I had considered it from the very beginning, really.

I just felt like it needed a lot more polish, another run-through on the plot to focus on removing/clarifying places it got too convoluted to be entertaining, and a little more depth to the story and reveals and explanations.

It was a decent tale overall, and I enjoyed it, so three stars for "liked but nowhere near loved."

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