Very believable, but somehow, when I was done, it didn't seem like much really happened in the book. ( )

All Souls' Rising is a fine historical novel set in the slave rebellion in Haiti in the 1790s. It includes real historical figures, such as Toussaint-Louverture (subject of a separate biography by Bell) who became the first black general to command an army until he finally surrendered to the French in 1802. In addition to the historical figures, Bell draws a rich cast of characters including slaves, slave leaders, white slave owners (of varying degrees of cruelty), the upper class whites, the poor whites of the towns, and the mulattos. It is a rich and varied canvas that draws inspiration from a seething and poisonous cauldron of racial and social tension and hatred. It is never so easy as just the whites versus the blacks because the whites themselves are riven into factions and shifting coalitions based on wealth and power, exacerbated by the divided loyalties engendered by the French revolution. Lest anyone think the Germans invented detailed racial classifications, it is interesting to note that in Haiti, under the French, the mulattos (persons of mixed African and European blood whether slave or free) were defined by 64 (!!) possible admixtures with a specific name and social standing assigned to each. This is a story of blood lust unleashed by the slave rebellion with almost unimaginable energies put into devising ways to make people die as slowly and as painfully as possible....often, however, the slaves were simply applying lessons they had learned at the hands of their masters. The novel traces the events of the rebellion through the eyes and actions of a few principal characters and it succeeds brilliantly in re-creating the atmosphere of the time, a time that seems almost unbelievable for its intolerance and cruelty. However, the book is not all cruelty and death, betrayal and misery....there is also love, devotion, empathy and sacrifice for others. In fact, pretty well the whole panoply of human emotions and relations. A very good read.

http://gr4c5.wordpress.com/2006/12/26... ( )

It might at first seem a strange move for Madison Smartt Bell (author of Soldier's Joy, Zero db, and Save Me, Joe Louis) to abandon his milieu of disturbed drifters and world-weary veterans for a period novel set in French colonial Haiti. And for the first 100 pages or so of All Souls' Rising, Bell does indeed seem out of his element chronicling the daily activities of haughty 18th-century slave owners.

But then one of history's most violent slave revolts comes crashing into the novel and we are more firmly planted than ever in Bell's disturbing territory of conflicting ethical systems. Once you've waded far enough in, All Souls' Rising pulls you away with the tide and gives you a thorough drubbing for the next 400 pages.

Full review: http://www.davidlouisedelman.com/revi...

http://www.bookcrossing.com/journal/2... ( )