A scholar, doing research on ancient manuscripts in Oxford’s Bodleian Library seemed just the thing to attract a librarian and bibliophile – and so I started A Discovery of Witches thinking it might be a novel about Oxford and intrigue. Well – two witches, a vampire and several demons later, I realized this was not going to be your typical academic mystery. Diana Bishop – the professor, and incidentally, witch, researching alchemy at Oxford’s famous library – requests and receives an ancient, alchemic text, which turns out to have been magically stored and sealed. Diana – a witch who has been denying and avoiding any hint of her own witchy powers since childhood, opens it. Evidentally all sorts of creatures are aware of her feat and start visiting the Bodleian to determine how she did it and what she does next. One of these visitors is a fellow professor, Matthew Clairmont – who happens to be a very old, very handsome and very powerful vampire. Their journey together to solve the riddle of the manuscript and Diana’s relationship to it and to the rest of the supernatural world is the stuff that legends (and very long novels) are made of.
I just read, on GoodReads, that this is Deborah Harkness’s first book – and if that is the case, it is truly remarkable. The 579 page novel is addictive and contains enough suspense, danger, history, magic and intrigue to keep me reading.
There is certainly a plethora of vampire stories going around, but this is not Twilight. This is an adult romance with a dark supernatural setting in which magic has consequences – both wonderful and terrifying – and nothing and no one is ever truly safe.
No comments:
Post a Comment