Shadow of Night (All Souls Trilogy, #2)

by Deborah Harkness

“Surely you aren’t one of those people who believe that historians do nothing but memorize dates and learn obscure facts,” I said. “My job is to understand why things happened in the past. When something occurs right in front of you, it’s hard to see the reasons for it, but hindsight provides a clearer perspective.”

And so I discovered that the practice of magic was not unlike the practice of history. The trick to both wasn’t finding the correct answers but formulating better questions.