A Discovery of Witches:
A Novel (All Souls Trilogy, Book 1)
By Deborah Harkness (Author)
A richly inventive novel about a centuries-old vampire, a spellbound witch, and the mysterious manuscript that draws them together.
Deep in the stacks of Oxford’s Bodleian Library, young scholar Diana Bishop unwittingly calls up a bewitched alchemical manuscript in the course of her research. Descended from an old and distinguished line of witches, Diana wants nothing to do with sorcery; so after a furtive glance and a few notes, she banishes the book to the stacks. But her discovery sets a fantastical underworld stirring, and a horde of daemons, witches, and vampires soon descends upon the library. Diana has stumbled upon a coveted treasure lost for centuries-and she is the only creature who can break its spell.
I found ” A Discovery of Witches” to be a fresh, intelligent, rich, and detailed re-imagining of our mundane world to include four kinds of people: humans and the so-called “creatures” known as vampires, witches, and daemons, where interrelations between the “creature” species is forbidden by an ancient Covenant.
The tale has the intellectual, detective aspects as found in the DaVinci Code It has the political and strategic aspects of a complex chess game, with creatures poised on the brink of war placing their pieces in complex plans and stratagems. It tells the story of a deep, forbidden love between an ancient vampire and a witch of great power, a love that is tested by those who would stop at nothing to preserve the ancient Covenant and possess the witch’s power.
The book has the feeling of a classic epic: rich in depth, complexity, and detail, all of which are interwoven into a larger tapestry which we can only see a small piece of in this novel.
I have now started reading book two in this series “Shadow of Night and find this book just as good if not better than “A Discovery of Witches.”
About the author
Deborah Harkness – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Born | Philadelphia, Pennsylvania |
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Occupation | Scholar, novelist |
Nationality | American |
Education | Mount Holyoke College, Northwestern University, University of California at Davis |
Genre | Fantasy, historical fiction |
Notable works | A Discovery of Witches Shadow of Night The Book of Life |
Website http://www.deborahharkness.com/ |