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bloodygranuaileSo last year I read Deborah Harkness' debut novel A Discovery of Witches, which is a paranormal romance about a witch and a vampire who fall in love and do wacky research about supernatural genetics and alchemy. The sequel came out last week, and I wanted to read it enough that I was willing to shell out the fifteen dollars that it costs ON KINDLE because fucking Amazon.
Anyway. It was very good, although, due to the generally impressive level of historical and linguistic research, I was extra annoyed on the few occasions I found things to nitpick (or at least thought I found to nitpick) that were not satisfactorily explained, the main one being the same thing that drove me up the wall last time, which is Matthew's insistence upon having an English first name even when he is having French middle and last names. Apparently, we get exactly one reference to the fact that "Matthew" has an alternate form in French per book. I do not understand why. We spend more time hearing Matthew being called "Matthaios" in this book than "Mathieu," even though Vampire Matthew (I now just call him Vampire Matthew because I don't want to deal with all the names) is not Greek at all, but Philippe is super pretentious and he will call Matthew by any goddamn name he wants to matter what language we're speaking.
...It bugs me as much as it does because the rest of the language stuff in the book is so good. Miraculously, Diana's German is about the same level of rudimentary as mine, so every time German shows up I am about as confused as she is! It is awesome. And there are fun and accurate smatterings of a whole ton of other languages scattered throughout the book, which makes me super happy.
So, at the end of the last book, we found out Diana was a timewalker, and she and Vampire Matthew were preparing to timewalk to Elizabethan England and find Diana a witch to help her figure out her magic powers now that she is not spellbound anymore, and to hunt down the elusive, enchanted alchemical manuscript Ashmole 782, and hopefully eventually solve Diana's parents' murder. This book kicks off by timewalking to Matthew's Old Lodge in 1590. The first half of the book is a little slow plotwise, with occasional unsuccessful forays into trying to find Diana a witch to teach her and little mention of Ashmole 782. Most of the plot in the first half is dedicated to further developing Diana and Matthew's romance, which readers who care about that sort of thing might like a bit more than I did (I used up all my ability to give a shit about people's brooding, guilt-ridden, possessive vampire boyfriends several years ago). If you are not super invested in the romance, it is helpful to be super invested in learning all sorts of crazy shit about Elizabethan England and whatever else the author feels like showing off that she researched, because, like in all of the bestest time-travel stories, Diana has Ye Olde Culture Shocke, and spends a lot of time adjusting to life in early modern Europe at great length and in great detail. Diana, being a historian, basically treats the first several months of time travel as one enormous hands-on research project, learning how to run a large, upper-class sixteenth-century French manor household. (They travel to Sept-Tours. Which is in France. Everyone speaks a lot of French. Everyone calls Matthew either "Matthew" or "Matthaios" and... yes, this irritates me a lot.) They also get married again (this is the third time; in the first book they do a neopagan handfasting and a modern French common-law marriage) at Sept-Tours, so that the author can show off just how many marriage customs she has researched, and also they spend the entire winter there, so we can learn about all the early-modern French harvest and winter rituals and celebrations. It is incredibly fascinating if you don't mind that the plot is barely moving forward at all.
In the second half of the book, we get back on the quest for witch mentors and Ashmole 782, and hang out with bunches of historical figures, some of whom turn out to be actually not human (and some of whom are really annoying, I am looking at you, daemon Kit Marlowe). We chase Ashmole 782 to Prague, because Prague is big in modern gothic novels (it is apparently very sexy), to the court of a lecherous Hapsburg king who is not very bright and is massively petulant, and there is all sorts of douchey court-drama power-playing, which I love (note: I would have been totally eaten alive in any aristocratic court ever. I could never pull that shit off; I'm not quick enough. I think that is why I like reading about it so much).
I don't really want to talk about the alchemy-related plot twists that show up because it is spoilery and pretty much some of the awesomest stuff in the book, and also I'd probably fuck it up. But let's just say I'm really hoping the third book spends a LOT more time on alchemy and Ashmole 782 and less time on history fun facts, even though I like history fun facts.
Also, in this book, Diana spends more time being awesome and snarky and less time being fed tea and eggs and freaking out about stuff, so that is an improvement. There are some real attempts to deal with the "vampires are possessive like whoa" part of the vampire myth without just glamorizing possessiveness as super sexy and not abusive at all, so +1 for feministiness, although I still think that I would never be able to be a vampire romance heroine. Also, there is an awkwardly meta conversation about the trashiness of modern vampire novels, which beats the usual habit of treating the Bela Lugosi Dracula movie as the most modern iteration of the vampire myth to compare everything to, but at the same time comes off a little bit as being "Look, my book is better than all the other vampire romances, see how I can criticize them!" and then I am like "Oh, go find Ashmole 782 already, Jesus Christ."
Also, due to time travel, BONUS VISIT FROM DIANA'S DAD. And of course, bonus weddings conducted by Matthew's dad. Maybe the third book will have more stuff about both of their moms? I love stories about moms.
Overall, I thought this book was very good, although I admit I made fun of it through almost the whole thing, because that is how I roll with vampires these days.
Anyway. It was very good, although, due to the generally impressive level of historical and linguistic research, I was extra annoyed on the few occasions I found things to nitpick (or at least thought I found to nitpick) that were not satisfactorily explained, the main one being the same thing that drove me up the wall last time, which is Matthew's insistence upon having an English first name even when he is having French middle and last names. Apparently, we get exactly one reference to the fact that "Matthew" has an alternate form in French per book. I do not understand why. We spend more time hearing Matthew being called "Matthaios" in this book than "Mathieu," even though Vampire Matthew (I now just call him Vampire Matthew because I don't want to deal with all the names) is not Greek at all, but Philippe is super pretentious and he will call Matthew by any goddamn name he wants to matter what language we're speaking.
...It bugs me as much as it does because the rest of the language stuff in the book is so good. Miraculously, Diana's German is about the same level of rudimentary as mine, so every time German shows up I am about as confused as she is! It is awesome. And there are fun and accurate smatterings of a whole ton of other languages scattered throughout the book, which makes me super happy.
So, at the end of the last book, we found out Diana was a timewalker, and she and Vampire Matthew were preparing to timewalk to Elizabethan England and find Diana a witch to help her figure out her magic powers now that she is not spellbound anymore, and to hunt down the elusive, enchanted alchemical manuscript Ashmole 782, and hopefully eventually solve Diana's parents' murder. This book kicks off by timewalking to Matthew's Old Lodge in 1590. The first half of the book is a little slow plotwise, with occasional unsuccessful forays into trying to find Diana a witch to teach her and little mention of Ashmole 782. Most of the plot in the first half is dedicated to further developing Diana and Matthew's romance, which readers who care about that sort of thing might like a bit more than I did (I used up all my ability to give a shit about people's brooding, guilt-ridden, possessive vampire boyfriends several years ago). If you are not super invested in the romance, it is helpful to be super invested in learning all sorts of crazy shit about Elizabethan England and whatever else the author feels like showing off that she researched, because, like in all of the bestest time-travel stories, Diana has Ye Olde Culture Shocke, and spends a lot of time adjusting to life in early modern Europe at great length and in great detail. Diana, being a historian, basically treats the first several months of time travel as one enormous hands-on research project, learning how to run a large, upper-class sixteenth-century French manor household. (They travel to Sept-Tours. Which is in France. Everyone speaks a lot of French. Everyone calls Matthew either "Matthew" or "Matthaios" and... yes, this irritates me a lot.) They also get married again (this is the third time; in the first book they do a neopagan handfasting and a modern French common-law marriage) at Sept-Tours, so that the author can show off just how many marriage customs she has researched, and also they spend the entire winter there, so we can learn about all the early-modern French harvest and winter rituals and celebrations. It is incredibly fascinating if you don't mind that the plot is barely moving forward at all.
In the second half of the book, we get back on the quest for witch mentors and Ashmole 782, and hang out with bunches of historical figures, some of whom turn out to be actually not human (and some of whom are really annoying, I am looking at you, daemon Kit Marlowe). We chase Ashmole 782 to Prague, because Prague is big in modern gothic novels (it is apparently very sexy), to the court of a lecherous Hapsburg king who is not very bright and is massively petulant, and there is all sorts of douchey court-drama power-playing, which I love (note: I would have been totally eaten alive in any aristocratic court ever. I could never pull that shit off; I'm not quick enough. I think that is why I like reading about it so much).
I don't really want to talk about the alchemy-related plot twists that show up because it is spoilery and pretty much some of the awesomest stuff in the book, and also I'd probably fuck it up. But let's just say I'm really hoping the third book spends a LOT more time on alchemy and Ashmole 782 and less time on history fun facts, even though I like history fun facts.
Also, in this book, Diana spends more time being awesome and snarky and less time being fed tea and eggs and freaking out about stuff, so that is an improvement. There are some real attempts to deal with the "vampires are possessive like whoa" part of the vampire myth without just glamorizing possessiveness as super sexy and not abusive at all, so +1 for feministiness, although I still think that I would never be able to be a vampire romance heroine. Also, there is an awkwardly meta conversation about the trashiness of modern vampire novels, which beats the usual habit of treating the Bela Lugosi Dracula movie as the most modern iteration of the vampire myth to compare everything to, but at the same time comes off a little bit as being "Look, my book is better than all the other vampire romances, see how I can criticize them!" and then I am like "Oh, go find Ashmole 782 already, Jesus Christ."
Also, due to time travel, BONUS VISIT FROM DIANA'S DAD. And of course, bonus weddings conducted by Matthew's dad. Maybe the third book will have more stuff about both of their moms? I love stories about moms.
Overall, I thought this book was very good, although I admit I made fun of it through almost the whole thing, because that is how I roll with vampires these days.