A Discovery of Witches by Deborah Harkness
I’d heard about this book, and more to the point, seen in on the bookshelves of people who share my taste, so I was excited to get the audiobook from audible. It’s a huge tome, something like 27 hours to listen to, so it’s a time investment of Brandon Sanderson level. It started out strong, full of rich details about life at Oxford from someone who is clearly well versed in and in love with both England and academia. This is the strongest thing about this book; the authors evident love of and knowledge of history and of England. My main problem with this book is that it doesn’t feel like high-stakes fantasy, it feels like a paranormal romance with some worldbuilding and plot that felt like an afterthought.
Diana Bishop is a historian, a witch of a famous Salem line who has eschewed her witch background in favor of presenting herself as a human researcher. The fact that she ignores friendly overtures from other witches who want her to be in touch with her people is the first thing I disliked about her. She meets a vampire named Matthew Clairmont, who is a brilliant and respected scientist and also a very old vampire. An ancient vampire is basically the ideal partner for a historian, and Diana is enamored of him from the start. I never quite figured out what he saw in her except that she was young and fit and blond, but in most romance novels that seems sufficient.
Diana calls a book from the library which turns out to be a very old and important book which many people are interested in, and which has been missing for a long time. The book is under a deep spell, but Diana seems to be able to open it anyway, even though she is a witch who tries not to use her magic for anything. She sends the book back into the stacks, where it vanishes again, but now lots of people are interested in her and threatening her. Matthew steps up to be her protector, but that plot element is mostly in the background because I would say 60-70% of the book is about Diana and Matthew falling in love with each other. They go on dates, they talk about how amazing he is, they drink a lot of wine. Lots and lots of wine. More to the point, it’s Diana learning how perfect Matthew is. Matthew is fabulously wealthy. Matthew is fantastically handsome (all these vampires are more beautiful, faster, stronger and taller than ordinary humans.) Matthew has met all the most famous people in the world for the past 1500 years. Matthew is famous and respected and gets into all the best clubs. Matthew drives a nice car and has a fabulous house. Matthew has a castle and fancy horses. Matthew drinks expensive wine. If you’re the kind of reader who consumes romance novels with gusto, you’ll probably find the long sections where Diana and Matthew are falling in love with each other to be the best part of this book as you fantasize about drinking ancient wine in the cellar of a historic house out of priceless glasses with an impossibly sexy and classy guy. I found them exceedingly tedious. Matthew’s personality is mostly about how amazing he is, how sexy he is, how rich he is, how tall he is, all the nice things he has and how much people admire him. Oh, and he gets angry quickly, though I didn’t see much evidence of that.
Diana is anxious a lot and she likes to exercise. We’re told she’s brave, but since she freaks out when she has to get immunization shots, and loses her s**t when she sees an upsetting photo, I didn’t think she was especially brave. She’s also supposed to be very intelligent, but she seemed a little foolhardy to me. She’s a witch, and there’s hints that she may have stupendously amazing powers greater than anyone, but she doesn’t use her magic for reasons she doesn’t want to get into. But no, she can’t use her magic for reasons she just learned about. But no, she can use her magic even though she doesn’t have any training, she just has to find the right reason. So she could be an amazing witch if she just applied herself, or something. Oh and they investigate Diana’s DNA and find out that she’s apparently potentially the most powerful witch ever and can do absolutely anything but that she’s been prevented from it because people would be jealous of all that power. This bugged the crap out of me. First of all, because I get irritated at power/superiority which is so focused on bloodlines and genetics as it gives me skeevy overtones of eugenics/purity/racism. I didn’t like the medichlorians thing in Star Wars, because it took Jedi from being a path that anyone could follow to something that you had to have the right parents to do. This isn’t the story of an ordinary woman who achieved great things through personal sacrifice, this is the story of someone who was always better than you finally coming to terms with her birthright, despite her protesting she doesn’t want this fabulous inheritance.
So the book’s plot starts when she finds this mysterious books, takes a hiatus for a long chunk while she and Matthew fall in love with each other, and resumes again when a witch attacks Diana to find out her secrets. Matthew comes and saves her, while Diana taps into some of her stupendous but undeveloped power. They to go visit her aunts so she can learn more about her magic. Despite the fact that she’s a well-regarded scholar, she seems put off by the intellectual work required to learn spells. Some new characters show up and everyone frets about rallying tremendous forces for the war to come. I knew this was the point at which I was supposed to be really invested in the characters and what they hoped to achieve, but they all seemed undeveloped to me and unworthy of victory. Even the ancient people feel young because they don’t seem to be deeply rooted in their social circles and don’t seem to take their responsibilities very seriously. Or maybe it’s that they’re all rich so just walking away from their jobs is not fraught with anxiety, and they’re all beautiful and famous so we’re supposed to care more about their problems. There are two characters who literally just show up out of nowhere and suddenly we’re supposed to be invested in them, but they are strangers who seemed just kind of shoehorned in. There’s a lot of prophecy and magic and things showing up magically when convenient, which didn’t feel magical so much as it felt like a shortcut for developing plot.
If you want a paranormal romance with a smart and protective sexy male lead and no actual sex, this is probably your favorite book. If you love history and fantasize about meeting someone who has met Western Culture’s Greatest Hits Collection contributors, you’ll probably love this. I didn’t love this. I didn’t like the world building. I didn’t like that vampires are all positive and almost zero negative (they can walk in sunlight without dying.) Demons are just like people only super geniuses. Witches have amazing power and are a different species from human. And humans, oh those sad poor humans they just pity (which kind of irritates me, as I’m a human as are most of my friends.) They felt snobby to me, except Diana, who felt like a social climber trying to fit in with the snobby high society she openly lusts after. When we get to the critical scene where Matthew’s life is in danger, I should have been weeping, but instead I just rolled my eyes.
I didn’t like that the plot was stretched too thin, and by the time they got to the last three hours of the book and the plot kicked up again, I wasn’t invested enough in characters to care about them. I found Diana whiny and Matthew an airbrushed Mary-Sue. I found the two demons who showed up at the 11th hour to be cardboard characters who felt out of place and whose appearance felt contrived. The conflict between most of the characters felt superficial, as everyone pretty much obeyed Matthew, and Matthew’s huge effort to rally his knights to defend Diana felt like an abuse of power on behalf of his love interest. Even people who should have had a deep and rich backstory, like Marcus and Miriam, just felt like extras because they seemed to have no motivation other than “do what Matthew tells them to do, but maybe complain about it.” Honestly, the most interesting character in the book is Diana’s aunts’ house, but even that was an issue because it solved so many problems that the characters should have been working on. Oh, fancy that, the very thing they needed just magically appeared. So convenient.
It was narrated by Jennifer Ikeda, who did a fantastic job and was probably the best thing about this book. She did the accents very well and had subtle ways of differentiating the characters that made up for some of the sameness in their dialogue. It’s written in first person omniscient. That is, it’s in first person from Diana’s point of view but she somehow knows everyone else’s thoughts and motivations and emotions. Like, “I saw Matthew smile. He was happy that I was finally understanding him.” or “I went to the door and Isabeau was standing there. She turned. She had been waiting for me.” It wasn’t a voice that worked for me, but perhaps that’s because I was so resoundingly chided against it by my writing teachers. I think most readers won’t notice it, or will ascribe it to Diana’s super-special inherited witch powers, but to me it was a flaw that grated. I kind of wish I hadn’t wasted 27 hours of my life on this, but after a while the sunk costs make me feel like I have to continue to the end. I really wanted to like this more. It’s so well regarded. I hear they’re making a show based on it. It will probably do very well. All the characters are beautiful and they aren’t troubled by sophisticated emotions or motivations. It will be like a soap opera, except set in old houses and without much plot.
View all my reviews
