I know.  I am well aware of the issues book fans have with the AMC series.  The divergence of screen from page is--well, if you have read the novels, you cannot miss the differences between them and the screen.  There has been a lot of criticism in other areas, too.  

Now, I am not a film critic.  I am a reader and a fan just like everyone else.  For most of its existence on its original host and now on this host, my website has talked only about the novels.  For many years, there were only the novels.  We all wondered if the Mayfair Witches would ever make it to the screen.  There have been occasions in the past where the novels seemed headed for the screen, only for the projects to go SPLAT.  Why that was, I don't think we've ever known.

This series doesn't seem to be criticized only for its divergence from the source material.  Whether or not Michael Curry and Aaron Lightner (aww, come on, what'd HE do to deserve that brush thingy??) were omitted or reduced or left intact, the complaints also have to do with what viewers consider to be the poor quality of the show in terms of production.

Oversimplifying the Mayfair Witches

"Oversimplification of a rich story" were words in the title of one critical article from 2023.  That tends to say a lot in only a handful of words.  It wasn't just "Where is Michael Curry/Aaron Lightner/Mona Mayfair??!"  I have to say that I can still recall while watching Season One, finding myself profoundly jolted that Rowan and Ciprien went from dinner and a house fire to the two of them waking up in bed together the next morning due to being stuck in a thrall.   

Thrall?

Say what, now?

It was the suddenness of Rowan and Ciprien shifting to an intimate relationship and the audience did NOT get the memo at all that really threw me.  Wait...what?  

I can muddle my way through a lot, and I really have come to loath arguing on the Internet, but I admit that such a startling shift was really disconcerting.  Coming from the novels, my mother, knowing this, would get these puzzled looks on her face when something about a character's background did not sound familiar.  

"Carlotta's father wasn't a banker, was he?"

"No, he was a judge."

Oy.

Yes, a lot of things were changed.  Would Anne Rice have approved?  I'm sorry, but I doubt it.

Three Centuries and Thirteen Generations in a Thousand Pages

On the other hand, consider what we're dealing with, here.

The Witching Hour is over one THOUSAND pages long.  The story is told over more than three centuries, and recounts thirteen generations of a family as it migrates its way from Scotland to Holland, then France, then Saint-Domingue (Haiti), and finally to Louisiana and specifically, to New Orleans.  The Mayfairs survive the witch hunters of Britain and Europe, fled France a century before the French Revolution, only to find themselves fleeing the Haitian Revolution and becoming Americans.  And THEEEEEN...

That one paragraph is oversimplification, yes.  Because all of these events, and the lives the Mayfair Witches and the rest of the Mayfair family lived amidst these events became part of their own history.  All of this was told in rich detail from the perspectives of modern-day characters, Talamasca scholars of the past, accounts provided by observers, "watchers"...and more.  It's one thing to have a novel that long at all...

BUT.

Sensitive Content In the Thousand Pages

The Witching Hour is long, and it has A LOT to unpack.  That alone no doubt made it a difficult novel to adapt to the screen.  Of course, a filmmaker is going to grapple with what to keep, what to toss, what is necessary, what is not, and how to tell such a story coherently in a very finite amount of time.  I'll be honest.  I do not envy the screenwriter(s) who had to puzzle that out.  

Keep in mind also that the Mayfair Witches novels have plots and themes in them that are...problematic.  Enough so that anyone adapting it to the screen MUST take into consideration how they will reframe a story that might suffer significant changes if certain content is flat out not going to be allowed even a mention let alone be on camera.  It's a tough call, and I cannot fault a filmmaker for doing what they actually do have to.

Have the changes made to the series from the novels "dumbed it all down"?  Have they turned the series into what some have called bad fanfiction?  

Fanfiction?!

Perhaps.  Then again, that depends on how one defines "fanfiction".  I've never really been drawn to reading it myself, preferring to stick to the novels.  It's actually something I love to learn about fiction novels--where they come from, where and from whom an author drew inspiration for the novels.  The pieces of real life that help to create a fictional landscape.  But always, my first love is trying to see the story, the settings, the characters, the way the original author envisioned them.

Only recently did I become aware of the controversy surrounding fanfiction and Anne Rice.  Since fanfiction is something that's never really been on my radar, it's not surprising that I was not aware of the extent of it until recently.  Once in a while, I'll drop by the Facebook page, comment here and there, but if it starts to look like I'm commenting into a void, I eventually don't comment at all for a while.  And off I go to other things.  But this whole fanfiction thing...I don't read it, don't write it, but to learn more about that was unsettling, to say the least.

Would the Mayfair Witches series qualify as "fanfiction"?  Would the Interview With the Vampire series qualify?  I honestly don't know.  

All I know is, thirty years ago, I bought a book at the grocery store that sounded interesting, took it home, and read it.  It had a profound effect on me, and even my life.  

And that means more to me than anyone can or will ever know.