I read Deborah Harkness’ “A Discovery of Witches” way back in 2011, for the BlogHer book club. It was a pretty weird book about vampires, witches, demons (spelled “daemons,” which irrationally annoyed me) and historical documents, and I loved it.
I was excited when I learned that it was the first book in a planned trilogy, so I read the follow-up, “Shadow of Night,” as soon as it came out. I picked the final book, “The Book of Life,” up this week when I spotted it on the shelf at the library. “The Book of Life” came out in July, which is indicative of how much I enjoyed the second book. (Spoiler: Not very much.)
“The Book of Life” was a very slow-starter, but the action picked up about halfway through. Once it finally took off, I enjoyed it enough to delay making dinner and then stay up far, far too late reading it. And then today I let the kids have extra computer time so I could finish.
“The Book of Life” is a pretty weird book about vampires, witches, demons (still spelled “daemons,” which still irrationally annoys me and also there weren’t enough of them in this book), historical documents and genetics, and I mostly liked it. It was a satisfying conclusion to the trilogy, but but I found the romantic/obsessive bits wandering a little far into “Twilight” territory for my liking.
Thank you. You’ve just convinced me not to read any of these books. That’s ok – so many books but never enough time. Right now I am reading a YA novel called “Time’s Edge” (2nd in a series of 3 I’m guessing) that is about time travel, saving the world, blah, blah, blah. The first was intriguing enough that I purchased the 2nd one from Amazon and I am not impressed. That being said, I am almost done reading it because, I paid for it, I better see where this goes. It’s funny how books can annoy us! (But mostly are amazing!)
I’m not a big fan of the YA/vampire books, either, especially when it comes to the Twilight stuff. So yeah, I’d probably skip this one like Suzanne said!
I didn’t like Twilight but I have heard good things about this series in general. Thanks for sharing your thoughts. Always enjoy hearing different perspectives.
I’ve been scoping Amazon unlimited the last few days and I think this was on the list. That makes three books in the last 2 days that I could be reading!