My rating: 3.5 of 5 stars
Book #2 in the All Soul’s trilogy which I think should have read immediately after the first one without almost a year gap in between. But after reading the book and catching up with the series on TV, all I can say is this is the first time I thought that the TV adaption was way better than the actual book, which has never happened before for me. I loved that instead of just Diana’s POV as in the book, the TV adaption gives equal weightage to the events happening in the background too.
The story is too convoluted, too lengthy, and too Elizabethan to make it gripping like the first book. I felt that the historian in the author went a little too descriptive more than the storyteller. Almost 590 pages and all I wanted was to trim and snip out many of the lengthy descriptions. Diane and Mathew are still my favorite couple and I had a good laugh when the author makes fun of all the vampire books out there that most readers love to devour and the common caveman theme that runs in all of them. From the title, I had thought this book would be focused on Mathew rather than Diana but Mathew once again feels like a shadow to the events happening in Diana’s life. There are quite a lot of secondary characters that add to the bulky material in the book but after seeing that Annie is a character who has been completely cut off from the TV series and then thinking about the vast number of people in the book, I realized that many of them do not add much value to the storyline especially the members of School of Night.
I did enjoy the plot even with all that slow pacing and fell in love with Diane all over again for standing up and fighting every bit of the way with Mathew in the face of his jealousies and rages. Though his way with words that are so poetic conveying his intensity of love and emotions towards Daina were, sigh, heart-melting❤️🔥 Harkness, however, deserves all the applauds in creating a stunning magical world, the witch’s coven and all that magic inside Diana with the familiar Cora were all beautiful and it is this spectacular imagery that makes me want to pick the next book in the series ASAP.
Expected more 3.5 stars 💦 💦 💦 💧
My Review of Book #1 & #3
Picking up from A Discovery of Witches’ cliffhanger ending, Shadow of Night takes Diana and Matthew on a trip through time to Elizabethan London, where they are plunged into a world of spies, magic, and a coterie of Matthew’s old friends, the School of Night. As the search for Ashmole 782 deepens and Diana seeks out a witch to tutor her in magic, the net of Matthew’s past tightens around them, and they embark on a very different—and vastly more dangerous—journey.
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Nice review! It’s been years since I read the trilogy, but as I’m watching season 2 of the TV series, I’ve been wanting to go back and re-read.
I started many series last year hoping for, u know that it would be completed, but I am still playing catch up.LOL. It was the TV series that made me wanna read this ASAP and honestly I have just completed re-reading the 1st one now! Thank you Lisa❤️