Warning: This book will make your day disappear.
Koosi approves of A Discovery of Witches, now available in paperback, Php355 at National Bookstores.
Jomari recommended A Discovery of Witches by Deborah Harkness months and months ago. We read the blurb—witches, vampires, an enchanted manuscript—and figured we’d had enough of this stuff in recent years, thank you. Yesterday we spotted the brick-like Penguin mass-market paperback and made the mistake of opening to page one. NO! We could not stop reading, and no deadlines were met.
The novel begins in a dusty, dimly-lit reading room deep inside the Bodleian Library at Oxford…sold! The heroine Diana Bishop is a witch from a long line of witches—one of her ancestors was burned in Salem. She has resisted using magic, preferring to employ her human abilities to become an academic. Her field is the history of science (much like Harkness’s), specifically the period when astrology and alchemy give way to Newton and physics. While doing research in England she comes upon a manuscript on alchemy labelled Ashmole 782, and strange things begin to happen. For starters there is a disturbing increase in the ratio of magical creatures—witches, daemons, vampires—to humans reading in the library.
Of course they’d be hanging out in the stacks. Say you have certain abilities that the general public would find alarming, or in the case of vampires an unnaturally long life span. What field would allow you the solitude, peace and relative obscurity to pursue your esoteric interests (and keep people from noticing that you’re 300 but look 30)? The academe! In Harkness’s world, vampires go into biochemistry (Blood!), particle physics, and other areas that require many, many, many years of study. And being scholars, they are not the swooning, simpering nitwits we have come to know and loathe from recent bestsellers.
Intelligent witches and vampires—we’d almost forgotten their existence. A Discovery of Witches is a supernatural thriller full of fascinating historical detail. Fine, the prose gets gushy and the editing could be tighter (Confession: we zipped through some of the less essential chapters), but it’s smart and fun. Now to find the sequel!
Answers to questions you might be asking, unless you wandered onto this site purely by accident >>>
February 14th, 2013 at 06:56
Okay, another one for my bucket list after Flame Alphabet and Noli/Fili.
I’m a huge Anne Rice fan and a huge vampire fan, and I like the witchy stuff too, and it’s been so long since anyone actually came up with worthy vampire-related book or series (“Buffy” is a different matter; that was awesome in a different way, plus that was TV mostly).
The “scholarly” and “smart” vampire is something I haven’t seen since the likes of Marius, Maharet, and David Talbot from Rice’s Chronicles. I suppose even Lestat, despite being a brat, is rather scholarly. Certainly, none of these vampires are Cullen-like in any way.
So if A Discovery of Witches has these very interesting vampires, I’m in.
February 14th, 2013 at 06:57
PS Why do many witches in modern lore have to have been descended from someone burned in Salem? :) The Charmed Ones, then of course Anne Rice’s Mayfair witches, and I’m forgetting a few others – all descended from Salem witches burned at the stake.
February 14th, 2013 at 10:04
This made me check out Wikipedia. “Harry Potter for grown ups,” according to the article. The words “silly” and “torpid” are also used to describe the book, along with “fun,” erudite,” and “enchanting.”
Warning noted.
Suddenly I have this urge to “embiggen” my knowledge about witches.
So far I only have my mother-in-law as reference.
February 14th, 2013 at 12:47
I enjoyed this book so much!
But I had to put down the book a few times because I was just jealous jealous jealous. It didn’t help that Matthew Clairmont resembled Tom Hiddleston in my head. I settled the matter by pretending I was Diana and that I could actually row a boat.
The details are a pleasure – the subtle tastes of wine, the French vampire household, the Oxford buildings, the process of research, the books and manuscripts. Why don’t we have libraries like Bodleian?
The book combines some of my favorite scenarios in fiction: vampires, different countries, literary/scholarly setting, and a complicated leading man.
This is the fun one in my own shortlist of best vampire fiction, which includes:
– Salem’s Lot: Stephen King. Enough said.
– The Historian (Elizabeth Kustova): An absolute literary gem filled with history, travel, and stealth horror.
– Snow Glass Apples (Neil Gaiman): You’ll never see the original story the same way again. Like Wicked.
– The first 3 books in Anne Rice’s Lestat novels: The best vampire history I’ve encountered, and an antihero to love and hate in equal measures.
– Lost Souls (Poppy Z. Brite): In turns gruesome and poignant and macabre and tragic. Beautiful and perfect prose by a then 18-year old goth girl. (And the 2 vampire erotica anthologies she edited wouldn’t be caught un-dead being anywhere near 50 Shades of Gray.)
I am rambling, sorry. This is turning out to be a good Vday :)
February 14th, 2013 at 15:12
I need some of that vampire money!
Once upon a time I tried to Nano a story about a vampire, a witch, and a werewolf running a funeral parlor. Basically Six Feet Under meets Being Human.
Also, I will forever love Charmed because it was cheesy and ridiculous. The buff shirtless demons help, too.
February 14th, 2013 at 19:11
Well, as somebody who is descended from people who actually practiced magic, this would be very interesting. My grandfather even tried to make me perform a healing ritual using a pentagram.
I will try to read this.
February 15th, 2013 at 08:06
Idiot I had been and am.
Turns out I already have a copy of this novel.
Beside it was a copy of uncle kurt’s slaughterhouse five.
Stayed up all night reading about billy pilgrim instead.
February 15th, 2013 at 11:33
I downloaded a copy and it is so much fun to read! I have begun plotting my weekend appointments so that I can free up some time to read this to the end.
It’s the Harry Potter-esque version of The Name of the Rose. Libraries and secret manuscripts.
February 16th, 2013 at 22:36
I didn’t finish this book for the reasons you didn’t like it: gushy prose and the wish for tighter editing. :(