A DISCOVERY OF WITCHES by Deborah Harkness

A DISCOVERY OF WITCHES by Deborah Harkness

The All Souls trilogy came recommended by the wonderful @shapedbystoriesdiane and the booksellers at Bookmarks when I asked for a fantasy book with a good romance. That’s definitely what you get with this first book. It’s a forbidden love story with vampires, witches, and daemons.⁣
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While the love story is the primary force driving this novel, what astounded me with this book is how freaking SMART it is. Kaylee ( @literarypengwyns ) talks about this on her IGTV, but I’ll briefly mention here that Deborah Harkness is ordinarily a nonfiction writer. I think that’s evident in the way she tells this story. She creates a fantasy world in our existing world, but doesn’t just plop some witches in and call it a day, she weaves centuries of history—real history—into the backdrop of this story. For example, we learn that Einstein may have been a daemon and how Darwin’s natural selection applies to these creatures. She is so convincing it really makes you think, oof WHERE ARE THE VAMPIRES??? For this reason, I needed a lot of mental stamina to read this one.⁣
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Onto the love story: It’s not a spoiler to say that Diana (witch) and Matthew (vampire) are our heroine and hero. I loved Diana. She was fierce and smart and didn’t back down when a man told her to. Which brings me to Matthew: overall, I liked him BUT he definitely has some problematic qualities. I’m fairly confident these are run of the mill “vampire” traits (he was possessive and controlling towards everyone). I don’t like when my main love interest has these qualities. So, I can’t say I swoon full stop at Matthew. But once we got into the real tension of the novel, I saw Matthew working hard to fight against those “instincts.” I’ll keep it at that for this non-spoiler review. ⁣
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Last thing I wanted to mention here is POV. Most of this book is told from Diana’s POV, but every few chapters, we’ll get a chapter where the POV is third person omniscient. Third person omniscient will also feel a bit jarring to me. I do think a Matthew POV was necessary, but I wish it was first person instead. ⁣
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Despite these few critiques, I did really enjoy this book and will be continuing on with the series!