Review: A Discovery of Witches

A Discovery of Witches by Deborah Harkness

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



This is the story of Diana Bishop. A expert in chemistry and alchemy of the 17th century who happens to be a witch. Which she hates, so she pretends she is human and avoids magic. That is, until in her research she comes across a very old and very odd manuscript that has been bewitched. Her breaking its spell brings out the creatures including more witches, vampires,,and demons. This book has apparently been lost got hundreds of years and has the secrets of the beginnings of each of these creatures.

Because of this, Diana becomes a target for many, including a gorgeous vampire named Matthew who sweeps Diana off her feet. Danger ensues and they must hide from it, which eventually leads Diana and Matthew into "time walking" or time travel. All of which sets the stage for an adventure told in a trilogy.

While I really did enjoy this story and I'm anxious to read the rest of the trilogy, I did not care for the way Diana seemed to go from successful expert professor who takes care of herself to pitiful Bella Swan when she finds her soulmate in Matthew the vampire. This is a successful woman who has made it all the way to Yale tenured professor all by herself. Yet, she meets this vampire and suddenly she's a helpless witch who can't take care of herself. She just falls into obeying him and going along with his pack mentality. WTH? This is a vampire and he's a vampire with rage issues. Why does she just turn into this helpless little girl who keeps getting hurt and needs to be saved and then sedated by him? Like I said, I enjoyed the story, but it definitely had shades of Twilight -- including the lack of sex and her always wanting it.

And furthermore, if her magic is spellbound and she can ONLY use it when she needs it why the heck was she so useless when Satu kidnaps her? Shouldn't her witch abilities come out in that time of need?







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The Waves

Thank god I finished the Twilight books. Those characters are like haunting my every thought. I am forcing myself to start reading something else right now to get them out of my head. But I thought they were great books. It was a really fast read too. I'm really not sure what people were complaining about in the last book, I thought it summed everything up just perfect, but I'm all for happy endings.

I'm working on some ATCs I'll post tomorrow hopefully. I received some in trade today that are just gorgeous. I gotta find the camera to take pictures.

So here is my current obsessive song, it's by Elisa called The Waves. She's an Italian singer, so her stuff is not really well known here, but it's just beautiful. I just love her songs, Rock Your Soul is other fave by her. But a word of caution, the video storyline is utterly stupid. The song has such a great story to it, and they did nothing with it. The video is just bizarre because it seems to have nothing to do with the song.

Twilight Obsession

I have been sick for 2 weeks with some kind of horrific bronchitis that I think is bordering on pneumonia. I just switched antibiotics at the doctor yesterday and now I'm an another one for 2 whole weeks. So...I'm exhausted and basically work and crawl into bed with books. I barely have the energy to fix my children meals and their dad is on a week long business trip in Newfoundland.

So since Sunday, when I picked up Twilight by Stephenie Meyer, I have become somewhat obsessed with this series. I read Twilight in a day and a half and I was like a drug addict - I had to read the rest of the story. Right. Now. So I forced myself to wait until Tuesday to go to Walmart of all places, and bought New Moon and Eclipse, books 2 and 3. I started New Moon last night and finished it earlier today. It was so good!! And now I can't wait to read what happens next in book 3.

So, tonight I finally found book 4, Breaking Dawn, at Target and picked it up. I am itching to get through Eclipse because I've read the spoilers online and know what's going to happen in Breaking Dawn and I can't wait!! I don't know what I'm going to do after I finish the last one. Hopefully, it will have some closure or I'm going to go nuts until November when the movie comes out.

I have never felt this way about a book or series before. I loved reading The Time Traveler's Wife, and I put it down frequently because I wanted to savor it and knew it would soon end, but this has really turned into a drug, I can't put the books down.

It's so embarassing. I think my obsession is because it is so easy to fall inside the story in just a matter of words. Don't you just love it when you fall into a story so quickly?? I don't know, I have never met anyone else who does that. Of course, I've never really met anyone who was as big of a bookworm as me either. My family looks at me like I have 3 heads when I ask them if they ever fall into a book or a movie and everything around them disappears. They have no idea what I'm talking about. Does anybody else do this or am I really that crazy?

Paper Dress

I signed up over at swap-bot for a paper dress swap. It looked like fun, but I had never made one before and was a bit worried it would end up hard to make, so I made a practice paper dress last night during a bout of insomnia to see how difficult this task would be, and it's so much fun! I even made a little wire hanger to put it on. I needed a thicker wire so it would be a bit sturdier, but all I had was 26 gauge, and its doing ok, but next time I'm using 20 or 22 gauge. This one was so much fun, I plan on making a few more and creating a little paper dress garland to hang above my corkboard to dress up my crafting studio.

If you haven't read any of Stephenie Meyer's Twilight series, you have to read it. I was skeptical over the whole vampire love story thing, especially since it was targeted for "young adult" because those kinda books usually just aren't my thing, even when I was the target age of young adult books, I had already moved to adult books, but this book is addictive, so addictive, I read 200 pages last night and forced myself to go to bed. If I didn't have children, I would have read the entire thing in one sitting, it was that good. It's a hard book to pull away from....so I plan to finish it tonight, and I already purchased the second book so I don't have to wait after finishing the first one. I am now dying to see the movie.

And I went to my jewerly making class yesterday. It was fun, and I finally learned how to do crimp beads. I made an awesome beaded bookmark and bought extra bookmarks to make even more, and I made a pretty bracelet. I'll post pictures later tonight or tomorrow after I finish my work.