A Discovery of Witches

I read a lot. My good friends know that they can ask me for a recommendation any time, and I'll always have a couple of suggestions for books I've read that I think they'll like. It's hard for me to commit to anything as structured as a book club (see "about me" on the sidebar to the right) , so I thought I'd try a blog format. I will post semi-regular book reviews that I hope will inspire you to read, to make comments on my reviews, and also to make suggestions for other books I might like. Cheers!

Amy

Last week was a big week in the world of Amy's Books. I read a little vampire romance, "Zen and the Art of Vampires" by Katie MacAlister and it's sequel, "Crouching Vampire, Hidden Fang". They were both a lot of fun, though more like one book in two covers than two separate books. I would totally recommend them if you need something light but well-written and entertaining.


I also started the book "C" by Tom McCarthy. It's going to take me a while to read this, because at times I feel like I'm drowning in words and have to stop. I'm about 1/3 of the way through and just renewed it from the library so I can give it some space. Then over the weekend I read "The Graveyard Book" by Neil Gaimon. I love his prose, his use of language. I want to have sex with it and have its babies. But that's another story. If you haven't read any of his work, I would strongly recommend this one or "Neverwhere" (aimed at young readers), or, for grown-ups, "American Gods".


The big event of the week was reading "A Discovery of Witches" by Deborah Harkness. I read a review of this book in Entertainment Magazine in February and really wanted to love it. Really. But did I end up loving it? I read all 579 pages in one day, so that tells you it's compelling. Ok, I also had a slow night at work which gave me more time to read that I might otherwise have had, but it was still a page-turner.

The first half was a fabulous mash-up of A.S. Byatt's "Possession" and "Twilight". (Say what you want about the "Twilight" series, you can't deny that those books addictive reads.) It left me in awe of the author's knowledge of history, poetry, literature, and, well, life. The two main characters, Diana Bishop, a witch, and Matthew Clairmont, a vampire, are crisp and contemporary and very well drawn. I loved Diana's intellectual discipline and physical strength, and thought the way the author developed Matthew's internal conflict over his growing attachment to Diana was well done. Every vampire has internal conflicts, but Ms. Harkness made Matthew feel fresh and interesting.

I hung in there through the middle section where Matthew takes Diana to his family home in France, but then things went sideways for the last 200 pages or so. Despite the use of a first-person narrator in Diana, I felt like the personality traits I liked so well got lost in the shuffle of new characters and plot twists. It felt like Diana spent a lot of the time injured and helpless, with Matthew operating at various levels of protection and rescue, which got annoying. More importantly (and this veers into spoiler territory so watch out) she gave Diana a magical power near the end of the book that ends up saving her, which felt a little convenient. I could see the logic of it, but I didn't like it. Also, NONE of the major conflicts were resolved by the end of the book. There MUST be a sequel, although there's no mention of it in the author's notes or on her blog. It's one thing to read a vampire romance in 2 hours and figure out you need to get the next one to really know the whole story, but a 600 page novel? That ends with a complete cliffhanger? Seriously?

That said, the characters were compelling, as were her descriptions of wine and food. She made a book that's a total sensory experience, and it's worth reading just for that. Ms Harkness is incredibly knowledgeable and it was a pleasure to read something that felt so contemporary even as it was solidly grounded in history. I look forward to reading the sequel that she's probably working on RIGHT NOW. Did I love it? Not as much as I wanted to, but it's still a very good read.