Book Review - A Discovery of Witches by Deborah Harkness (Audio)

How did I come into possession of this book?

When this book first came out I had read many reviews about it and it seemed to be a sort of book I would enjoy.  What mostly drew me to it was that it had a realistic setting with a hint of fantasy.  It also helped that it seemed to be an adult book written in the same genre that so many young adult books are currently successful.  I happened to see it on the audio bookshelf at the library and decided to give it a listen!

What is it about?

Diana is a graduate student at Oxford, and she knows that she descends from a line of witches but chooses not to explore that side of herself and just be a normal person.  This all changes when she comes across a coveted manuscript that greatly affects the whole magical world.  

What did I think?
 

I really liked the way this book started.  It all seemed very real with a vampire or witch thrown in there, but it was still in a believable world.  I felt like I was reading a good piece of literature with a lot of different adventures that could stem off from it.  Then suddenly I was thrown into a love story, which wouldn’t be bad if it wasn’t so unbelievable.  Diana falls in love with this vampire in a matter of days.  I now felt like I was reading any other vampire young adult novel.  What happened to this strong female character?  She was gone.  I was quite a bit less interested in the rest of the story, but it held my attention well enough to finish.  It does leave with a big cliffhanger and I’m not totally committed to being interested in where the second novel will take us.  The one thing that may keep me around is that her writing style makes for great reading (or listening), and I do like to see how things resolve.

Who would I recommend it to?

At first I thought this would be a great book even if you don’t like fantasy or vampire stories since it seemed to be written so well.  But when things took a turn for the love struck magical beings I can see how it would lose many readers.  If you like love stories especially ones involving witches and vampires you will like this book, if not you should probably avoid it.

Audio Book Review - Spell Bound by Kelley Armstrong

How did I come into possession of this book?
I had listened to the previous book, Waking the Witch, without realizing that that book was part of a much longer series of books.  I really enjoyed it and was always on the lookout for another of her books on audio at the library.  I eventually found and listened to Living With the Dead and realized that some of the characters were the same from the other book and that a little previous knowledge might’ve helped to pick up on who and what some of these characters were.  I’ve since looked into this series of her books and realized you don’t really need to read all of them in order, but it might help with some things. After looking into these books I did find out that Spellbound came after Waking the Witch, and since I knew the ending of that book and most of the characters I decided to borrow the audio version of Spellbound from the library.

What is it about?
The story starts with a young witch who seems to have just lost all her powers in order to save a young girl from becoming an orphan.  Actually that’s the way the previous book ended but that is where the story picks up.  Suddenly she realizes she is being targeted what she thinks to be a witch hunter or possibly another supernatural.  Many supernatural characters come to light as they all try to get together to figure out what is going on in their world.

What did I think?
I really liked Waking the Witch, but this one left me uninspired.  Part of it might be because I don’t know all the characters from the previous books and therefore don’t care about them very much.  I also tend to like fantasy books that also involve reality.  Waking the Witch dealt with a lot of non-supernaturals but this book only dealt with those in the “Otherworld” and it got a little too out there for me.  I also felt like plot lines went in circles and not much was resolved or even happened.  I guess this will be resolved in her next book, but none of the plot lines were compelling enough to make me want to read any more about these characters.  I’m sad this book left me disappointed because I do think Armstrong is a good author but she just didn’t hit the mark with this one.

Who would I recommend it to?
I think I could only recommend this book to hardcore Kelley Armstrong fans that have read many of her ‘Otherworld’ books and feel very connected to many of the characters.  The only other way I would recommend this is if the next book in the series turns out to be great and the information in this book is necessary to things that happen in that book.  But I won’t be able to make my judgment on that, yet (I guess I just set myself up to read it)!