A Discovery of Witches

I loved this book!

a good read

Good at first, but there were way too many pages of boring filler until an uninteresting ending.

Deep in the stacks of Oxford’s Bodleian Library, young scholar Diana Bishop unwittingly calls up a bewitched alchemical manuscript in the course of her research. Descended from an old and distinguished line of witches, Diana wants nothing to do with sorcery; so after a furtive glance and a few notes, she banishes the book to the stacks. But her discovery sets a fantastical underworld stirring, and a horde of daemons, witches, and vampires soon descends upon the library. Diana has stumbled upon a coveted treasure lost for centuries-and she is the only creature who can break its spell.

The entire series is one of the best I have read.

This is a vampire-witch romance novel. Not what I was looking for. Brings the legends into the 21st century – DNA research for the origins of witches, vampires and daemons.

This book came highly recommended from a friend, who wanted my opinion on “the science” part of the book. I will start with my general review and then zoom in on the science.

Diana is a super powerful witch who has always denied her powers for reasons that, though thoroughly explained as the story develops, made little sense to me. The story begins when she meets a vampire (any interaction between witch and vampire is frowned upon) and together they work to unravel the mystery around a magical alchemical manuscript.

The novel develops several tropes (slow-burn romance, star-crossed lovers, chosen one etc…) but
this book was mostly boring to me. It moved (nowhere) very slow. The plot was obvious. I did not care much for any of the characters. Matthew is controlling and arrogant while Diana is stubborn to the point of being dense. The feelings between the characters develop out of nowhere. I had no “feels” and was perplexed by the sudden promise of eternal love. The motivations for Diana to resist her magic or for the characters not to have sex seemed preposterous and not explained enough for me to believe them. The end was non-existent, there was no wrap up, the mystery was not solved and the there was a complete lack of a climax.

So, why three stars? The book is very well written. I appreciated the inclusion of diverse characters (two lesbian aunts and a gay coworker) though it didn’t do enough to balance Matthew’s (co-protagonist) old-school ways. I found the exploration of history, wines, and alchemy interesting.

Now, down to the science. (I would never nit-pick like this, but it was a request). How accurate is the science in this book? Not accurate at all. In fact, I would go as far as to say that a simple consultation with any biology major would have saved quite a few blunders.

One of the main quests of the book is to figure out if vampires, witches, daemons have a common ancestor or evolved independently. Any basic knowledge of the theory of evolution would tell you that any species evolved from a common primordial ancestor.

On to the definition of species: there are several definitions of what’s a “species” (morphological, phylogenetic, etc…) but the most commonly adopted is the biological definition where individuals who can reproduce and have fertile progeny are considered to belong to the same species.

End of the quest.

There are a lot more glaring mistakes, like having “one extra chromosome,” which by default, would make it impossible (or very difficult) to reproduce with humans (or anyone with one chromosome less).

It goes on with trivial mistakes, like stating that the universal blood receiver is AB- (it’s AB+ in fact).

So this was a miss for me, and most likely I will not read the next book in the series.

Interesting but it grew long and somewhat boring. I tried the sequel and could barely get started before it repelled me.

I recommend all 3 books in this trilogy. Great series!

Slower paced, but amazing characters and a rich world!