The third book had to reveal some mind blowing things to fit with all the buildup, but instead it was a collection of jumbled tangents. It was like the author had a brilliant idea for the first book and then had no idea how to carry it through. it could be the pizza boy for all they know! It was truly bizarre.Ĥ) Diana's familiar: I won't say too much about this topic so I don't give away any spoilers, but I was utterly confused about the change in the firedrake's personality throughout the story, especially towards the end.ĥ) The haphazard plot: It honestly felt like the author didn't think this trilogy through very well. Then they are looking for the person "leaking their secrets". They freaking told an entire class of students what they were researching. They tell everyone EVERYTHING! Everyone seems to know what they are searching for, that Diana is pregnant, simply everything! I have no idea why this had them throwing caution to the wind. In this book? They let it alllll hang out. I'm not sure why the author didn't just keep her focus on the main characters.ģ) The lack of secrecy: I'm so confused! In the previous books, Diana and Matthew guarded the secret of their relationship, the quest for the book, and the secrets of Matthew's family fiercely. All of these extra people and their minor storylines weighed the plot down so much. There were so many people re-introduced that I had a hard time keeping track of everyone. It was a terrible choice, in my opinion.Ģ) The number of characters: This book was like a who's who from the previous two books. To make matters worse, the author switched from 1st to 3rd person throughout the book! Talk about a headache. Why not just two? Those extra points of view just seemed lazy to me, just a way for the author to do some "telling" and less "showing" about the characters. This book had at least 5 different points of view, which irritated me to no end. I'll try to break down my main issues with the story without giving away any spoilers.ġ) The POV switches: I have very specific opinions about lots of POVs in the a story: Namely, I hate them. Unfortunately, the careful world-building fell to crap in the final installment. I also have a deep love of time-travel books, so I was practically guaranteed to fall head over heels.Ī lot of time has passed since the second, and my expectations were sky high for the third. It was lovely in the way that I find historical fiction is pleasurable. The second book was also pretty successful for me. I felt like the story was building up for something important, something powerful. I fell in love with the story, the characters, and the magic of it all. I wasn't as much into reading then, and I stumbled across this one while randomly perusing my library for books. I feel like we didn't read the same book.Ī Discovery of Witches was one of my favorite reads of 2011. I'm talking EPIC proportion let down.įirst of all, I am shocked at all the positive reviews I'm seeing. She has received Fulbright, Guggenheim, and National Humanities Center fellowships, and her most recent scholarly work is The Jewel House: Elizabethan London and the Scientific Revolution. Harkness has published scholarly articles on topics such as the influence of theatrical conventions on the occult sciences, scientific households, female medical practice in early modern London, medical curiosity, and the influence of accounting practices on scientific record keeping. She is currently a professor at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, where she teaches European history and the history of science. Having spent more than a quarter of a century as a student and scholar of history, Harkness holds degrees from Mount Holyoke College, Northwestern University, and the University of California at Davis. The popular television adaptation of A Discovery of Witches, starring Theresa Palmer and Matthew Goode, was released in 2019 by Sky/Sundance Now, and also broadcast on AMC. The All Souls series has been translated in thirty-eight languages. The first book in Harkness’s beloved All Souls series, A Discovery of Witches, was an instant New York Times bestseller and the series has since expanded with the addition of subsequent NYT bestsellers, Shadow of Night (2012), The Book of Life (2014), and Time’s Convert (2018), as well as the companion reader, The World of All Souls. Deborah Harkness is a #1 New York Times bestselling author who draws on her expertise as an historian of science, medicine, and the history of the book to create rich narratives steeped in magical realism, historical curiosity, and deeply human questions about what it is that makes us who we are.
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