The Book of Life
by Deborah Harkness
This book series is the equivalent of a yule log fireplace movie. Wait…please put down your torches and pitchforks. Also, you shouldn’t even have those since this is a book about witches, and we already have the yule log for fire. Let me explain what I mean.
This review is about the third book in Deborah Harkness’s All Souls trilogy. The first book, the Discovery of Witches, was one of my favorite books as a teen. I loved the Oxford setting, Diana Bishop’s romance with the vampire Mathew DeClairmont, the themes of family, and the promise of magic and Ashmole 782, a manuscript that captures the attention of daemons, vampires, and witches alike. There is so much in this book, and yet when I tried to reread it years later, I learned that the 600 pages of this book really should have been halved.
Much of the conflicts in the Discovery of Witches resolve in a whimper not a bang, and most of the pages are spent languishing over everyday details, yoga class, academia, a cordial meeting of the parents, and so on. Even the mystery of Ashmole 782 isn’t brought to a head until the final book in the trilogy, over two thousand pages after its introduction. The pace of this book is a stroll through a botanical garden, stopping to smell the roses every five feet.
But I did it. I read the third book. I even committed a readers sin by skipping the second, since the second book is spends a majority of its 600 pages on side quests and introducing a glut of side characters. The third was no different than the first, but it did deliver long awaited resolutions. In this book Mathew and Diana return to the present day to at last unlock the secret of Ashmole 782 and protect their newfound family from the forces hellbent on pulling them apart.
I say this book is a yule log fireplace film because it immerses you in the feel of academia and family but the plot is so slow that the feel of the world is the only thing keeping you tethered. There are no smaller conflicts or mysteries providing an updraft. You have a cozy fire not a real movie. You have nearly 600 pages of it. The payoff to the series is great but chasing it will not sustain you. You have to love the embers of the fireplace. If you can, then you’ll find one of the best depictions of academia and community.
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