Shadow of Night

I loved A Discovery of Witches but had to drag myself through a lot of this one. The middle bit was particularly dull with the wedding and her integrating herself into Elizabethan society, and that took me ages to get through. I originally liked the book because I found it different and quite intelligent, but this one reminded me a bit too much of middle-aged Twilight. It has the aspects that I particularly disliked like the sudden amazing ability to become pregnant and the obsession with no sex before marriage. Thankfully, Diana hasn't become quite as irritating as Bella (yet). I don't really have a problem with people playing around with vampires, but I think there should be some sort of downside to it, not that everything is wonderful and the couple are just so amazing they defy the very laws of nature so that the author can make life absolutely perfect for them in time. I didn't like the bit where he took her blood to ‘discover all her secrets' either, that was a bit creepy and controlling.
Anyway, hopefully the final book will be better and it'll get back to the manuscripts and less about the romance and their dull family life.

A disappointing follow-up. Yet I still want to know what happens in book #3, so I'm hooked to some degree!

While I listened to the first volume of the trilogy on Audiobook, I read this one. I am willing to believe that the different format accounts a bit for how many stars I gave each book. While listening to a book being read aloud necessarily means that I am listening to a voice actor's interpretation of the tale, reading on my own makes me focus my attention differently. Given that I'm not reading these for research, I am more than content to let the audio interpretation of Discovery of Witches influence my own understanding of the work. Left to my own devices reading this volume, I found myself noticing dropped threads, hurried passages, and superfluous plot elements. It felt like Harkness crammed too much into volume two and had to work to insert plot elements around Matthew and Diana's relationship in the crevices in her historical novel. I rather like the historical novel, so I won't gripe too much.

A fantastic continuation of Deborah Harkness's ‘All Soul's Trilogy'. The book picked up at literally the same moment the first left off and kept on going, clear to the end. It is very much a “second book of a trilogy”- there are a lot of clues, and hints, and theories, and very little in the way of answers and conclusions. However, the book only leaves you wanting more, and I am avidly awaiting the third book of the series.

My only complaint with this book is the immediate introduction of a vast number of characters that Diana and Matthew meet on their travels. You're never given quite enough back story on any of them to ever really keep them straight, and several of them begin to be referred to by nicknames almost immediately. There IS a list of characters at the back of the book, but I would have liked to have more in depth details on them included there to help keep them straight. Thankfully, besides being rather annoying, this did not detract from the book.

All in all, if you enjoyed ‘A Discovery of Witches', this book will not disappoint!

This book is shorter on action and longer (much longer) on history that the first, which isn't a bad thing, but I did find myself hoping for an epic battle scene to break up the dry bits. I bet that comes in the final book, for which I will now begin the long wait.