Friday, February 15, 2019

“A Discovery of Witches” by Deborah Harkness


Don’t let anyone fool you. This is the Twilight series for adults. Seriously. The plot centers around a witch, Diana, who has refused to use her powers really. She’s a historian of science, studying ancient alchemy texts and splitting her time between Oxford and Yale Universities.

Then she calls up this text from the library that causes many different creatures to follow her around. One of them is a mysterious, attractive vampire named Matthew. (You can see where this is going.) Somewhere in the middle of her trying to get information from him about why all of these creatures want this text and him trying to protect her from these creatures they fall madly in love. And so it goes.

I was a little frustrated with how much of the book is centered on their relationship. There is this whole message from her mother that they think refers to Matthew and all that. Ugh, she doesn’t need a man in order to do her thing! And also how much time they spent doing nOTHING. The first third of the text involves them sitting in a library. The next third Matthew brings Diana to his home in France and she sleeps roughly 80% of the time. I mean Harkness if you want to prove that Diana is not a damsel in distress she could act like it just a little more!

Having said that, I think that it was really well written. The characters are very fleshed out, even the minor ones clearly have independent thoughts and wills and backstories. And her portrayal of magic and vampires is fascinating. Harkness is a historian, so a number of fascinating historical facts come to light in the plot, through both Diana (as a historian) and Matthew (as an ancient vampire).

This series was adapted to tv fairly recently, I’ll probably watch the adaptation, even if I decide that the rest of the series isn’t really my thing. But yeah, if you’re looking for Twilight with a little more substance to it, this is the book for you.

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