Musing Monday's, July 28, 2014

TC is in the sun musing about the chipmunk she sees out the window.
Hopefully that is all she does.  So far this month she has presented me
 with two chipmunks - one alive and one dead but both in my bedroom.

Musing Mondays asks you to muse about one of the following each week.…Musing Mondays is sponsored by Should Be Reading.

• Describe one of your reading habits.
• Tell us what book(s) you recently bought for yourself or someone else, and why you chose that/those book(s).
• What book are you currently desperate to get your hands on? Tell us about it! 
• Tell us what you’re reading right now — what you think of it, so far; why you chose it; what you are (or, aren’t) enjoying it.
• Do you have a bookish rant? Something about books or reading (or the industry) that gets your ire up? Share it with us!
• Instead of the above questions, maybe you just want to ramble on about something else pertaining to books — let’s hear it, then!

Today’s musing is about the All Souls Trilogy by Deborah Harkness.  I loved A Discovery of Witches, book # one.  I listed to it as an audio book and then picked it up at the library in hard cover and re-read.  I liked Shadow of Night, book #2.  I didn’t think it was as good but I felt it was much better than many middle books in trilogies.  I was really looking forward to The Book of Life, book #3.

I loved book one, liked book two and have very mixed feeling about book three.  I was glad to see how the trilogy ended but I found that I was not caught up in the story this time.  For the first third of The Book of Life I had to force myself to keep reading.  Then the story caught me but it did not last.  Again I had to make myself read before the story again caught me. There was more time where the story did not catch me than time it did.  I was glad to see how the series ended but know it is a book I will not re-read. 

I received a copy of The Book of Life from Netgally so I did not have to pay to be disappointed.

Waiting on Wednesday, March 12, 2014

 

 Waiting on Wednesday is a weekly feature sponsored by Breaking the Spine.  It is a great way to share upcoming releases.

I am waiting on The Book of Life (All Souls Trilogy, #3) by Deborah Harkness.  I have quite a wait as it will not be released until July 15, 2014.  I hope I can snag a review copy.

What Goodreads says:

The highly anticipated finale to the #1 New York Times bestselling trilogy that began with A Discovery of Witches

After traveling through time in Shadow of Night, the second book in Deborah Harkness’s enchanting series, historian and witch Diana Bishop and vampire scientist Matthew Clairmont return to the present to face new crises and old enemies. At Matthew’s ancestral home at Sept-Tours, they reunite with the cast of characters from A Discovery of Witches—with one significant exception. But the real threat to their future has yet to be revealed, and when it is, the search for Ashmole 782 and its missing pages takes on even more urgency. In the trilogy’s final volume, Harkness deepens her themes of power and passion, family and caring, past deeds and their present consequences. In ancestral homes and university laboratories, using ancient knowledge and modern science, from the hills of the Auvergne to the palaces of Venice and beyond, the couple at last learn what the witches discovered so many centuries ago.

With more than one million copies sold in the United States and appearing in thirty-eight foreign editions, A Discovery of Witches and Shadow of Night have landed on all of the major bestseller lists and garnered rave reviews from countless publications. Eagerly awaited by Harkness’s legion of fans, The Book of Life brings this superbly written series to a deeply satisfying close.

Shadow of Night by Deborah Harkness

Fantasy

Like a lot of others I have been waiting for Shadow of Night since Diana and Matthew stepped out of the present into the past at the end of A Discovery of Witches.  I was not disappointed in Shadow of Night.  It lived up to all my expectations.  It is typical of middle books in a trilogy.  Some things were solved.  Most things were not but everything was put in place for book three.

Here is what Goodreads says:

Deborah Harkness exploded onto the literary scene with her debut novel, A Discovery of Witches, Book One of the magical All Souls Trilogy and an international publishing phenomenon. The novel introduced Diana Bishop, Oxford scholar and reluctant witch, and the handsome geneticist and vampire Matthew Clairmont; together they found themselves at the center of a supernatural battle over an enchanted manuscript known as Ashmole 782.

Now, picking up from A Discovery of Witches’ cliffhanger ending, Shadow of Night plunges Diana and Matthew into Elizabethan London, a world of spies, subterfuge, and a coterie of Matthew’s old friends, the mysterious School of Night that includes Christopher Marlowe and Walter Raleigh. Here, Diana must locate a witch to tutor her in magic, Matthew is forced to confront a past he thought he had put to rest, and the mystery of Ashmole 782 deepens.

One of the main strength of Deborah Harkness’s writings is the detail to history that is included in her books.  I felt like I was back in Elizabethan England meeting people I had only read about.  The details about every day life added to the depth of the story. 

Matthew and Diana had to carry the bulk of the story.  They were great characters in A Discovery of Witches and they just got better in Shadow of Night.  Many of the side characters were unique to the time period but some carry over to the present.  All of the side characters were all well drawn and added to the story line.

The main plot is still in place.   What is on the missing pages in Ashmole 782 and how will those pages help.  The action in Shadow of Night is aimed at acquiring what will needed for when they returned to the present.  Some personal issues for Matthew are solved. The big problem is still there.  There are just more ways to solve the problem now then there were before.

I received an eARC of Shadow of Night from both Netalley and Edleweiss.  The only problem with reading this before it is published is that I have a longer wait for the next book.  So far there is not title or date for book three.

Viking Adult published Shadow of Night by Deborah Harkness in 2012.