Not a Magical Discovery

A Discovery of Witches by Deborah Harkness starts with a witches.  Then there are vampires.  And finally there are daemons.  And they aren’t supposed to mix, but they do even though they don’t get along.  A witch and a vampire should never mate, or have a relationship other than one of hatred.  So, of course, a witch and a vampire have a relationship.  Perhaps the discovery of the book is that witches and vampires and daemons are not so very different despite their differing opinions and talents.

Somewhere amidst the romantical story is a plot, though a very thin one so far.  The witch in question is Diana who is bound to be very much like her mythological namesake eventually if not fully yet.  The vampire is Matthew and he’s ridiculously old, like Biblically old.  Diana gets her hands on an ancient manuscript and does not realize the significance of it.  Matthew is drawn to her because of the manuscript at first, but then realizes there’s more to his attraction than that.  And there’s a covenant consisting of three witches, three vamps, and three daemons that feel said manuscript, which is now inaccessible unless Diana figures out how to call it, threatens all the magical creatures.  Basically, the Covenant wants to kill Diana for the manuscript and because she and Matthew are oh so in love and threaten the whole ‘magic can’t mix’ ideal.

Some other stuff happens in the middle and toward the end as well, but basically it’s all set pieces and window dressing for the romantic story of a vampire and a witch, as well as a lead in to book number two of the trilogy.  Basically, it’s all very Twilight for Grownups or some such.

The problem with the book really is that the lack of plot does not balance with the depth of backstory.  There is so much about the main characters’ pasts and how magical creatures supposedly came about that the main story gets lost in the mix.  While this is all well and good, the author, a historian herself, gets so caught up in telling all the fun facts about history and genetic research and wine, that there’s very little room for developing plot.  For a book that comes in just short of 600 pages, that’s a lot of nothing really going on.

Admittedly, my reading bias toward the young adult genre means I’m used to books that are as much plot based as character based and let’s just get on with the story.  But this was just ridiculous even for adult fiction.  I felt like I might as well have just as read Moby Dick again.  Some of the information in the back story is useful and probably necessary for the two future books, but I felt like the whole front half of the book was about Diana and Matthew plodding along in a relationship with a few references back to the main story every now and then to be sure the reader remembered what was supposed to be going on.  Not to mention that Diana (along with Matthew's wine habit) seems very much like she might be a not so veiled version of the author at times 

While I can see why Deborah Harkness’s A Discovery of Witches has become such a big deal in books this year (similar to The Historian or Angelology, perhaps due to its depth of study), I can’t recommend this book.  As such, put it in the Avoid Me pile.

Work Cited.
Harkness, Deborah.  A Discovery of Witches.  New York: Viking, 2011.