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A Discovery of Witches (All Souls, #1)

Deborah Harkness

Start date: October 1, 2014

Finish date: October 31, 2014

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What Members Thought

Aug 11, 2018 Kim Martin rated it really liked it

I couldn’t possibly write a review that would beat two that have already been written here.... check out Bradley’s 5 star review and Jenne’s 1 star review. Now mash them together and you’d know how I feel about this book.

I like to share a favorite passage, so here it is:
“I don’t mind one moment of love that you’ve shared with any creature, living or dead,” I said emphatically, “so long as you want to be with me right at this moment.”
“Just at this moment?” He asked, his eyebrow arching up into a ...more

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Aug 25, 2013 J. Else rated it it was ok

The book started out promising. Professor Bishop, distinguished history scholar and professor, tea aficionado, rower, and yoga enthusiast is going about her day in the library researching. Then the author spins you on your head when you discover Bishop is a witch. I loved how the author made you think one thing and then spun it another way. Definitely grabbed my attention and hooked me. Plus, I love old libraries, mythology, and the blending of history and science.

Anyway, Bishop accidentally cal The book started out promising. Professor Bishop, distinguished history scholar and professor, tea aficionado, rower, and yoga enthusiast is going about her day in the library researching. Then the author spins you on your head when you discover Bishop is a witch. I loved how the author made you think one thing and then spun it another way. Definitely grabbed my attention and hooked me. Plus, I love old libraries, mythology, and the blending of history and science.

Anyway, Bishop accidentally calls forth a magical text that every witch, vampire, and daemon in the world seems to want and has wanted for hundreds of years. Sadly, she sends the text back to the stacks where once again, no one can find it -- including the author.

For a while, I thought that this book was going to be a more adult Twilight. The main character wasn't (initially) defined by her new love, thought for herself, had a personality, and didn’t draw to mind images of Kristen Stewart. But alas, it was not meant to be for long. Diana began to get annoying by the way she seemed to always disregard hers and others’ safety. She never listened to anyone and was very self-absorbed (outside of her obsessiveness for Matthew that is).

Even though I was really intrigued with the beginning of the book and discovering the contents of the Ashmole 782 manuscript (that reportedly describes how witches, vampires, and daemons came into being -- since I love history/origin stories), subsequent pages and pages are devoted to describing what she eats, smelling wines they drink, how long she sleeps, what's in her tea, yoga poses, etc.

The plot got lost. Is this book about Diana’s mystical powers, her parents’ mysterious murders, the Ashmole manuscript, the vampires’ inability to reproduce, Darwin’s theory of evolution, the biochemical studies Matthew and his vampire cohorts are exploring on witch origins, the disparity between the magical races, the romance between a witch and a vampire (forbidden!), watching vampires feed, wait…what was that first part again? I began to wonder when we were going to come back to the beginning. Unfortunately, we never did! The one thing that held my interest was the one thing we lost in the story.

The ending gives you almost no answers. You learn a few things but not the whys or the hows of things. And I never understood “time walking.” Okay, so when Diana was a baby, she would “disappear” and time walk. Yet… somehow, when Diana and Matthew time walk to a spot in the book that has already happened, they are inhabiting their past bodies? Where did baby Diana go and why then did she disappear if time walkers inhabit their previous bodies and not the present ones? Oh wait, Diana was inhabiting her present body (because of her vaccine bandages that were still on her arm), but somehow hers and Matthew’s previous selves disappeared from that past moment... Huh? I’m very particular about time travel stories, and the author did not explain this properly or even explore the concept enough to make it make sense. This severely bugged me. I cannot just accept time walking under the witchy spell plausibility umbrella. There are too many variables that just disappear because they’re inconvenient.

While I want to find out the story of Ashmole, I really am not sure if I want to trudge through the other books. I began to get sick of this one half-way through but kept hoping I would be given some sort of answers to the multiple questions that the author proposes. Alas, this was not to be. We got a lot of random quotes from alchemy texts, which basically made no sense to me and were not well explained from the get-go. What’s the big deal about alchemy anyway? I’m sure it’s intriguing, but that sense of wonder was not shared with the reader.

I think Harkness can create some beautiful moments for the characters. When Diana saw her mother sitting under the apple tree during her torture, I thought that was bittersweet and took some of the edge off what was really happening. But these moments begin to get stretched too thin. Much of this book should have been edited out and made more concise. There is so much about Diana we never figure out, yet there are so many conversations that seem pointless to the overall plot and character development. The story was way too watered down (“witch-watered” down is probably more appropriate in this case). While Marcus is an important minor part of the story, a large chunk of a chapter is spent on his backstory which was unnecessary. A few tidbits are fine, but with so much else being explored, why must every minor character’s tale (except Miriam strangely enough) be told? You never get much of Marcus’ personality except that he’s mad at Matthew. So why is he hanging around? Endless backstory does not connect me to a character. It’s a step in that direction, but a character’s actions are what endure them to the reader. Marcus is a vampire. If he says he met Diana’s distant relative in the past, I’m going to believe it. I don’t need a detailed backstory to make me understand.

This author is clearly a very bright intellectual woman, and she has a ton of ideas. I just wish she hadn’t put all of them in this one book. Perhaps I will try the next novel. This book kept me hanging on just enough to stop me from abandoning it. But if I begin to get bored again with yoga poses and Diana’s endless eating and lethargic romantic interludes, I will have to give up. I was very excited to start this book, but sadly, the potential this book had got lost after a few chapters. Did it time walk over to the next book? I guess I’ll have to see.

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Jan 16, 2017 poot rated it it was ok

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

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Oct 14, 2012 Ami rated it liked it

Shelves: book-club-reads, mystery, paranormal-supernatural, romance, films-and-tv, series, time-travel, 21st-century, metamorphe, 2012

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. I enjoyed this read, and I especially liked the way all of the history and science were woven together. I liked the main premise and it did keep me interested enough to finish it in two days and I've just picked up the second one from on hold at my library.

I loved the idea of alchemy and the Bodleian and a "witches house" and the ghosts. I thought it was great that they were doing "normal" things such as eating and drinking wine and doing yoga. I especially enjoyed the bits of quoted text and p I enjoyed this read, and I especially liked the way all of the history and science were woven together. I liked the main premise and it did keep me interested enough to finish it in two days and I've just picked up the second one from on hold at my library.

I loved the idea of alchemy and the Bodleian and a "witches house" and the ghosts. I thought it was great that they were doing "normal" things such as eating and drinking wine and doing yoga. I especially enjoyed the bits of quoted text and poetry. The only things that really irked me about this book is that one, it was too EASY. These three groups have a very deep hatred & fear of each other. However, Ysabeau barely put up a fuss over Diana before accepting her (althought part of that may have stemmed more from her anger at her boundaries being invaded more than anything else as in the enemy of my enemy is friend) and Diana's aunt was acting as if they were old friend before they all split up. And all of this in only 40 days!? It was just too much, like I said.

Also, I just can't fathom why the Congregation would be after Diana in the capacity that they were. At first, I thought she'd upset the other witches because she was kind of snooty and holier-than-though in her rejection of who she was. (She just didn't have much common sense. I got the impression she never really grew up even if she did have all of those degrees.) And of course I could understand why they would be so upset about the possibility of the manuscript falling into the wrong hands. But that was just the tip of the iceberg and as it came out that it was related to her parent's (especially her father's) deaths, and then the way Diana was harmed, it was just, Why? She was certainly very powerful, more powerful than had been seen in recent times so the only thing I could get out of that from the Congregation's behavior is fear. But fear of what exactly? And how do the missing pages from the manuscript tie in?

This got 3 stars from me. Part of me did want to give it more, but the story line just wasn't tight enough and there were things that could have been explained better. Like I said I'm interested in seeing where this goes so I'll be starting Shadow of Night this evening. ...more

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