Deborah Harkness "A discovery of Witches"

[Belwenda]

I've been reading DH's  (trilogy but only the first 2 are written); "A Discovery of Witches" Viking- Penguin.

She is a medieval history scholar- has authored a well recieved non fiction account of Dr. John Dee's experience (coversations) with angels. I can put the books down! 

[Jevne]

I managed to fight my way through about 3/4 of 'A Discovery of Witches' before it lost my interest .  Diana started to annoy me, after awhile.  It is bookmarked, if I decide to pick it back up.  I purchased it, because I was trying to lighten up a little bit.  Not a bad read, but bad timing.  I mean, how many research studies can one person read, before their brain explodes.  Apparently, I am doomed to find out. :)

[Kupala]

I enjoyed books 1 & 2 until the super speshul snowflake pregnancy. By then it had begun to feel like Twilight for adults. Which is too bad, because if that hadn't happened I probably would have bought all three.

[Sylvan]

I recently read the first two books in this trilogy (the third isn't out yet) and while I liked the first well enough to keep going, the second was abysmal and made me frustrated and angry although I finished it out of stubbornnes and perhaps with the hope that there would be some major payoff at the end. There wasn't. They "timewalk" to Elizabethan England, which I would normally love, but the author let her historian self wildly eclipse her duties as a storyteller. It's almost like it was an excuse to write historical fan fiction, like she was getting off on creating these scenes where Christopher Marlowe and Walter Raleigh drank in taverns together but which drove the plot nowhere and was only historian porn. There were WAY too many characters and the whole thing could have been cut in half or more. Not to mention that the main characters (matthew and Diana) became insufferable idiots. In the first book, I thought he was kind of hot and by the second I felt suffocated by him. Was also supremely annoyed by the notion that he knew every single major and minor historical figure since the year 500. 

 

My bet is that the first book was largely shaped and influenced by editors who knew they could craft an attractive product to sell and I think for the most part, it worked (although I also was not fond of Diana as a character and didn't understand why the author chose to narrate in first person without giving us some interesting parts of Diana's inner life, which there appears to be little of). By the time the second book came around, the first had already been a moderate success and so the author was likely to have had more "freedom" in her process. A shrewder editor would have insisted on cuts. That's my theory anyhow.

 

One concept I did like was the notion of a third category of "creatures" called daemons who are often creative geniuses. It's an appropriation and re-imagining of the daemon term/concept, certainly, but I was intrigued by the idea of a fresh "being" that wasn't the old fair like vampires, witches, werewolves, etc. A bunch of instable, supernaturally twinged artists appeals to me. 

[Belwenda]

I just liked the historical context- she is accurate there.

[Belwenda]

But then I'm an avid reader of children's lit , my expectations may be lowered:)