One Page at a Time
So I have a great relationship with my local book store here on the shore (in Chincoteague), The Book Bin. A few years ago, I won The Book of Life which is the third book in the All Souls Trilogy. When I realized they had given me the third book, first I laughed, and then I realized, they did it on purpose! Now I was going to have to buy the first two books. So I found my way to A Discovery of Witches and I have really enjoyed it. All three books are fantastic, which is something I can’t say about every series I’ve read. They each carry their own story and kept me enthralled the whole time. However, the first one is probably my favorite.
I was very thankful to have the other books in the series because I needed to keep reading. I could not put these books down, except to maybe google some historical references. There are a LOT of historical references in all of these books. One thing’s for certain, not only did I read a really enjoyable book, I learned a lot as well. Without spoiling anything, here are my takeaways.
A Discovery of Witches – Deborah Harkness, 2011
Katie Kendrick
In this novel, we meet Diana who is a witch from America who is doing research at Oxford. She discovers an old manuscript that seems sort of ‘off.’ It’s almost as if she has a special connection with the book. She eventually puts it back into the stacks, but what happens after changes everything. Soon, packs of demons, witches, and vampires begin arriving at the library. They all want the manuscript that Diana had but they can’t get it. It’s been lost for centuries. This manuscript supposedly holds the secrets to how magical creatures came into being. How can it be lost when she just had it though? It’s around this time that she meets our leading man, Matthew. He is a vampire and a biochemist who is affiliated with the university. He is just as interested in this book as everyone else but soon we learn he also can’t stay away from Diana. She isn’t taken aback when she meets him, since this is just the normal everyday world she lives in as a witch. It’s a story about passion, loss, magical mayhem, plot twists, and history.