The Book of Life by Deborah Harkness

You see it all the time - a trilogy starts off super strong and drags you into its world. Then the second book spends a lot of time explaining the plot so you finish it a little less enthusiastic. By the time you finish the third installment, you're disappointed at how it all ended.

This trilogy doesn't do that!

No disappointments here as the third book in Harkness' All Souls Trilogy wraps up. This was an amazing collection of books - intelligent and exciting with real three-dimensional characters. I absolutely loved it.

In the third installment, our main character base has broadened considerably. Diana, a witch, and Matthew, a vampire, are no longer the only characters we're worried about. Yes, they still propel the action, more so now that Diana is pregnant with Matthew's twins and they're both breaking the single most important rule of no intermingling between creatures. Plus, there's the blood rage - a severe, chromosomal sickness in vampires that can be passed along when turning a human into a vampire. This disease causes the infected to simply lose control and become a violent, murdering machine. It can be managed but it isn't easy. So, with all these black marks against the couple, family is more important than ever. They will protect the couple and the babies. They will help get answers to the question that started this whole series off when Diana discovered a book, magically hidden in a library, that contains the origins of all creatures. Everyone is after the book, people are killing for it, but Diana needs it now more than ever to protect her children, her family, and save Matthew from blood rage.

What's so unique about these books is the history and science fused into the supernatural. Yes, there's magic and vampires and all the strange things that go along with characters like that, but there is also academia. A huge part of all three books take place among books, in libraries, and on college campuses. It gives the story some plausibility because it goes beyond the fantastic and roots the existence of these creatures in the real world. The idea of these character traits being rooted in DNA, something that can be studied, is fascinating.

There's also the concept of family at the center of the story. It's everything and that's a message you don't often get. The vampiric family structure is very important and strong. Vampires must adhere to the responsibilities of the family hierarchy and everything is done in a certain, proper way. Diana and her family of witches is brought into this structure and must adapt. They blended family they all become and their devotion to each other compliments the rough action and tense moments perfectly. 

Another great thing about this trilogy is how it ends. The third book keeps our characters going on their initial quest, but adds in an additional element - a rogue vampire - to create new tension and fear and to propel the characters into a new direction. I like that Harkness held something back until the third book so we'd have something new. 

So many series I've been reading over the last few years are coming to a close in the next few months. It's always hard to let a story go, but this one went out in such a perfect way that I'm not sad to be done. 

Start at the beginning and read my review of A Discovery of Witches then check out book #2, Shadow of Night.

Shadow of Night by Deborah Harkness

I feel like this book falls into the trap common for second books in trilogies - it takes all the intense, fast-paced action of the first book and slows it way down while subtly hinting at the climax coming in book three. This slowing down of the story can take something that started out very exciting and dull it down a little bit. I still like the series and still enjoyed the story but the tone here was so significantly different from A Discovery of Witches, that, if not for the repeat characters, it would be hard to tell the books belong together.

Shadow of Night has our heroes - Diana the Witch and Matthew the Vampire - travel back to the 16th century to track down a magical book Diana encounters in her present. This encounter proves extremely dangerous for Diana as we see in Discovery because it is believed this book contains the origins story for all non-humans who live in the world today. Diana is somehow magically bound to the book while her relationship with Matthew also has some alchemical link to it as well. They've also traveled back to hide out from those chasing Diana giving her time to explore her magic.

Matthew was actually already a vampire by the 1590's so he and Diana resume the life he's already lived in England among such historical characters as Sir Walter Raleigh, Queen Elizabeth, Christopher Marlowe, and Shakespeare himself. In addition to these historical characters, this book is overloaded with new characters to keep track of; a lot of whom are significant in Matthew's extensive vampire family tree. It's a lot to keep up with as Matthew and Diana are married again and really begin to build their romantic relationship which had it's negatives for me as well. At times, the relationship felt a little Twilight-ish for me with too much angst and over emotion, but at least we're dealing with two adults here instead of teenage hormones.

While I didn't really care for the intricacies of their romance, it was interesting to meet the rest of Matthew's family and go deeper into the hierarchical structure of a vampire clan. The witches and their magic get a little silly for me and I felt the historian part of Diana's character all but vanishes once she goes backward in time (and I really liked that part of her character from Discovery.)

The story was still a good read and definitely an adventure but just a bit patchy when compared to Harkness' first attempt. Not much of a cliffhanger either so am definitely curious to see where the story is going to go and what's going to happen in book three. I'm also a little concerned about how much will actually be crammed into book three to make up for the slower pace of this volume.