Celebration bears some likeness to Settle's Blood Tie: both novels have a foreign setting, involve a diverse set of characters, and feature experimentation with point of view. But in Celebration the experimentation does not work as well, and a comparison with the earlier novel provides some evidence of how far and perhaps why Settle fell short.

Yet in both cases (as in the case of her monumental Beulah Quintet) Settle's ambitions were undeniably grand.