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A review by aprildiamond
A Discovery of Witches by Deborah Harkness
2.0
Read this a while back and didn't have the time to type out my review but here it is now.
The Good:
Honestly, I enjoyed the plot and some of the subplots. I was actually really interested to find out what was going to happen with the manuscript. I was curious about the vampire/witch/daemon splits and the history of those races. I wanted to know more about Diana's parents and the conspiracy of what had happened to them. Even the DNA part was enough to catch my attention. In fact, I was invested almost enough to consider continuing the series. But, due to reasons I will outline later, I decided that this book was more 2 than 3 stars and that I couldn't force myself through the rest of the trilogy.
Another thing I liked were some of the side characters. Diana's gay witch aunts, Sarah and Emily, were great, and so were the vampires Marcus, Miriam, and Ysabeau. I thought the parts of the book with those characters interacting were some of the best moments (especially near the end with the vampires and witches living in the same house). They really added the flavor.
And this book needed the extra flavor because...
The Bad:
To get the big thing out of the way first, the length of this book. Yikes. I can read 700+ pages if those pages contain interesting events or at least fun time-fillers. NOT if those pages are random descriptions of EVERY SINGLE DRINK the characters try or EVERY SINGLE ROOM they step into or EVERY SINGLE DAILY ACTIVITY that they do. Seriously, I DO NOT CARE about the yoga classes. Absolutely do. not. care. It felt like the author was describing when a character BLINKED, that's how heavy and boring most of it was. Plus, once Matthew and Diana decided that they were in love, the descriptions extended to every stupid "passionate" interaction they had, and that was EVEN WORSE. (More on that later).
Since I don't DNF books, I had to drag myself through this, constantly checking page numbers to see how much more I had left. It was that boring.
The author's handling of Diana as a character was also a giant misstep. At the beginning, I really liked Diana. She had attitude, was independent, and found things like vampires following her around to be creepy and intrusive. Great, no problems there. Then, at some point early on, the author completely forgets what Diana had been and the character DEVOLVES. She stops doing things for herself, falls in love with Matthew, one of the vampires who was stalking her (?!), and of course, changes her mind from telling Matthew "do not tell me what to do" to "oh I understand you just want to protect me of course I'll listen to everything you say! you are in charge of me!" So frustrating, and it continues the whole rest of the book.
MATTHEW. Without a doubt the weakest character in this entire thing. The author paints him as this brooding, mysterious vampire who is simultaneously super caring and soft but also willing to murder. So is he dangerous or not? Because this book couldn't decide.
HE ALSO WAS SO BORING. He could have died during this book and I wouldn't have cared because there was nothing for me to care about. His personality was written in the author's notes as "attractive vampire who thinks he owns women" and that's how it stayed.
^Speaking of the owning women thing, let's talk about it! Matthew states that Diana and everyone else in his family have to listen to him because he is the man of the family and that's how vampires work, of course! There is absolutely NO WAY that vampires could be immortal and REFUSE to modernize. They had to change in other ways, because obviously people don't interact the same way today that they did 500 years ago, so to claim that this aspect had to stay the same is absolute BS. And, even worse, NO ONE puts him in his place for this! I was expecting Diana to tell him off and for him to change his ways but NOPE! Instead she decides that yes, he does know best and she should listen to him about her own life choices :)
Last but, oh boy, definitely not least. The "romance". God, there were some parts of this book where I thought I would physically gag. Why did Matthew and Diana fall in love so fast? It's stupid and I don't understand. Why did Matthew DECIDE that they were married for some arbitrary reason even though they never got married? It's stupid and I don't understand. Why did Diana agree to this garbage marriage? It's stupid and I don't understand. Why did we need to know about every intimate moment that these two had, like every time they made physical contact? It's stupid and I don't understand. That's kind of the pattern with the main romance in this book. Stupid and nobody understands.
The description of all the intimate moments was really the icing on the horrible cake, though. I wanted to tear my hair out from that alone. There were also sex scenes and I can't stand sex scenes, but that's of course just my opinion so take that as you will. I didn't rate the book lower because of them, I just didn't enjoy reading those parts.
On the whole, please don't waste your time on this because while the plot might be okay, the backwards ideas and annoying main characters ruin it. And you would be wasting A LOT of time.
The Good:
Honestly, I enjoyed the plot and some of the subplots. I was actually really interested to find out what was going to happen with the manuscript. I was curious about the vampire/witch/daemon splits and the history of those races. I wanted to know more about Diana's parents and the conspiracy of what had happened to them. Even the DNA part was enough to catch my attention. In fact, I was invested almost enough to consider continuing the series. But, due to reasons I will outline later, I decided that this book was more 2 than 3 stars and that I couldn't force myself through the rest of the trilogy.
Another thing I liked were some of the side characters. Diana's gay witch aunts, Sarah and Emily, were great, and so were the vampires Marcus, Miriam, and Ysabeau. I thought the parts of the book with those characters interacting were some of the best moments (especially near the end with the vampires and witches living in the same house). They really added the flavor.
And this book needed the extra flavor because...
The Bad:
To get the big thing out of the way first, the length of this book. Yikes. I can read 700+ pages if those pages contain interesting events or at least fun time-fillers. NOT if those pages are random descriptions of EVERY SINGLE DRINK the characters try or EVERY SINGLE ROOM they step into or EVERY SINGLE DAILY ACTIVITY that they do. Seriously, I DO NOT CARE about the yoga classes. Absolutely do. not. care. It felt like the author was describing when a character BLINKED, that's how heavy and boring most of it was. Plus, once Matthew and Diana decided that they were in love, the descriptions extended to every stupid "passionate" interaction they had, and that was EVEN WORSE. (More on that later).
Since I don't DNF books, I had to drag myself through this, constantly checking page numbers to see how much more I had left. It was that boring.
The author's handling of Diana as a character was also a giant misstep. At the beginning, I really liked Diana. She had attitude, was independent, and found things like vampires following her around to be creepy and intrusive. Great, no problems there. Then, at some point early on, the author completely forgets what Diana had been and the character DEVOLVES. She stops doing things for herself, falls in love with Matthew, one of the vampires who was stalking her (?!), and of course, changes her mind from telling Matthew "do not tell me what to do" to "oh I understand you just want to protect me of course I'll listen to everything you say! you are in charge of me!" So frustrating, and it continues the whole rest of the book.
MATTHEW. Without a doubt the weakest character in this entire thing. The author paints him as this brooding, mysterious vampire who is simultaneously super caring and soft but also willing to murder. So is he dangerous or not? Because this book couldn't decide.
HE ALSO WAS SO BORING. He could have died during this book and I wouldn't have cared because there was nothing for me to care about. His personality was written in the author's notes as "attractive vampire who thinks he owns women" and that's how it stayed.
^Speaking of the owning women thing, let's talk about it! Matthew states that Diana and everyone else in his family have to listen to him because he is the man of the family and that's how vampires work, of course! There is absolutely NO WAY that vampires could be immortal and REFUSE to modernize. They had to change in other ways, because obviously people don't interact the same way today that they did 500 years ago, so to claim that this aspect had to stay the same is absolute BS. And, even worse, NO ONE puts him in his place for this! I was expecting Diana to tell him off and for him to change his ways but NOPE! Instead she decides that yes, he does know best and she should listen to him about her own life choices :)
Last but, oh boy, definitely not least. The "romance". God, there were some parts of this book where I thought I would physically gag. Why did Matthew and Diana fall in love so fast? It's stupid and I don't understand. Why did Matthew DECIDE that they were married for some arbitrary reason even though they never got married? It's stupid and I don't understand. Why did Diana agree to this garbage marriage? It's stupid and I don't understand. Why did we need to know about every intimate moment that these two had, like every time they made physical contact? It's stupid and I don't understand. That's kind of the pattern with the main romance in this book. Stupid and nobody understands.
The description of all the intimate moments was really the icing on the horrible cake, though. I wanted to tear my hair out from that alone. There were also sex scenes and I can't stand sex scenes, but that's of course just my opinion so take that as you will. I didn't rate the book lower because of them, I just didn't enjoy reading those parts.
On the whole, please don't waste your time on this because while the plot might be okay, the backwards ideas and annoying main characters ruin it. And you would be wasting A LOT of time.