A Discovery of Witches

I recently discovered the book "A Discovery of Witches" by Deborah Harkness, the first book in the All Souls trilogy.  I saw it in the bookstore while waiting at the Austin airport, and it was intriguing enough that I bought a copy when I was back home.  I'm normally not into books that involve supernatural creatures like vampires or witches (never got into Anne Rice or the Twilight series), but the historical bent of the novel intrigued me, as well as the credentials of the author.  Harkness is a professor of history at University of Southern California, who specializes in history of science and medicine during the Elizabethan era.  She also writes a wine blog. 

SPOILER ALERT

The main character in "Witches" is Diana Bishop, a witch and a Yale professor whose main scholarly interest is researching alchemical manuscripts.  In this world, there are three types of supernatural creatures: vampires, witches, and daemons.  After her parents died when she was seven years old, Diana turned her back on her magical powers.  While doing research at Bodleian Library at Oxford, she recalls a mysterious alchemical manuscript called Ashmole 782, but the magical manuscript was missing three pages.  Although she only spends a few minutes with the text, other supernatural creatures who also want the manuscript start finding her, and most of them are not the friendly type.  A 1,500-year-old vampire and scientist, Matthew Clairmont, appoints himself her protector, and the two of them fall in love.  This is a problem because there is an ancient covenant that forbids the union of different creatures.  The Congregation (the ruling group consisting of 3 witches, 3 vampires, and 3 daemons) are after Diana and Matthew for both this breach of the covenant and Ashmole 782.  In the meantime, Diana's powers start reasserting themselves, but she could not control them.  In the end, Matthew and Diana decide to use her timewalking ability to travel back to Elizabethan England to escape the Congregation and the other creatures searching for Diana, to get Diana the tutoring she needs for her powers, and to find Ashmole 782 while it is still intact.

I enjoyed the book immensely.  Harkness is a very intelligent writer who does not dumb down the materials for her readers.  The love story between Diana and Matthew is also compelling, and the other characters (such as Matthew's vampire mother Ysabeau and Diana's aunts Sarah and Emily) are believable.  Harkness is also very adept at using conventional lores about vampires, witches, and daemons, and using them for her story.  For example, vampires have their own family structure made up of parents who make their children vampires, and brothers and sisters are made by the same parents.  Vampires are also usually involved in professions that take full advantage of their immortality - scientists and financiers.  Daemons are creative types who gravitate toward the arts or fashion design, and can be a bit unstable.  Witches live in haunted houses who can expand if expecting guests, and in typical fashion can brew potions and recite spells.

Harkness stuffs a lot of details into this book, and the pace can be leisurely at times (especially in the beginning), but overall it's a fun read.