The Book of Life by Deborah Harkness

Rating: WARTY!

"As enemies loom, witch Diana Bishop" cuts the cloth they produce "and vampire Matthew Clairmont" fashions it into bespoke clothing. What a joy. And nary a werewolf in sight. Barf.

A Discovery of Witches by Deborah Harkness

Title: A Discovery of Witches
Author: Deborah Harkness
Publisher: Viking
Rating: WARTY!

This is volume 1 of the All Souls Trilogy, but after starting this, I was forced to conclude that it ought to be the Ass-hat Trilogy. This is a DNF review because this novel was too tedious to finish. Deborah Harkness is a professor of history at USC, and I'm guessing that she had the idea for this novel when she was researching a scholarly work she had written shortly before she wrote this novel. She starts out with Doctor Diana Bishop, a witch who has rejected her heritage which was passed on to her by her parents, two supposedly powerful witches who should never have procreated, some said. They were right. Her parents died in Africa, but we're given no details; nor are we really informed as to why Bishop has so whole-heartedly rejected witchcraft, but she stubbornly resists it and did not knowingly employ it to get herself into the position she's in; she did that entirely through her own smarts and hard work. She does allow herself an odd spell here and there in an emergency or when she's tired, but she severely restricts herself.

Note that I have no more nor less respect for Wicca than I do for any other religion - they're all nuts as far as I'm concerned, but that doesn't mean I can't enjoy a good supernatural romp. It's all fiction isn't it?!

The novel begins with Diana in an Oxford university library, opening an ancient manuscript written by Elias Ashmole, who died in 1692. There's a problem in that the manuscript's title is in English, which IMO is highly unlikely given that scholarly treatises were routinely written in Latin in that day and age. For example, Isaac Newton was a contemporary of Ashmole, but his classic work wasn't called "Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy" (as such), it was titled Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica. OTOH, Harkness is the scholar, not me, so maybe Ashmole did write in English.

The real problem here is with the plotting. Bishop is purportedly a PhD who is something of an expert on ancient manuscripts. So how in hell did she come to request Ashmole 782, which has long been known to be missing - for one hundred and fifty years, so Harkness tells us? Surely someone of Bishop's stature would know it was missing and that it would, therefore, be foolish to request it? This makes no sense whatsoever, and again, it's an example of a writer not thinking about what they're writing.

Bishop is immediately aware that there is magic embedded in the manuscript, but she doesn't allow herself to indulge in it, studying its condition and layout carefully in a purely scholarly manner, and returning it to the desk with undue speed without really reading it! The next day in the library, she meets a vampire, Matthew Clairmont. Yep - it didn’t take long to introduce the studly YA trope guy, even though this isn't a YA novel. He's tall and muscular, and good looking, of course - oh, and he watches her sleep. Clairmont is a professor at Oxford University, which is where Bishop is visiting. Evidently vampires are scientists in this world, and demons are the celebrities and rock stars!

Now here's a thing that I find absolutely hilarious in these vampire stories: every one of them typically has a really old vampire and contrary to human life, the oldest guy is the most powerful, and the trope is that he's tall and muscular, but the problem here is that people historically were short compared with us. This wasn't a universal rule; there were some tall people in history, but in general everyone was short. So how is it that the oldest vampires are universally tall? It's nonsense, and it is one more example of writers simply not thinking before they write. They really don't place the vampire in context. They just invent him out of nothing and never honestly consider the consequences of his origins, which is ironic, because origins is precisely what this novel is all about!

Clairmont knows who Bishop is, claiming to have read several of her works, and he invites her to dinner, She declines. That's when he watches her sleep: he's after the manuscript she had examined the previous day, and for no reason other than that it gave him a chance to watch her sleep, he convinces himself that she had this irreplaceable manuscript with her at home. He stands watching her snoring on her settee, remarking on how unusual it is for a witch to pulsate with light like she does, and he leaves when he realizes the script must be still at the library. But he never breaks into the library to try and find it! Clairmont is a moron.

I had thought I might have trouble with this novel when I began it, since it's far more of a tome than a novel - striking out strongly for six hundred pages of closely-spaced typeface, and although parts of it were interesting and easy reading, it became increasingly tedious, the deeper I went into it. I seriously have to question my unerring ability to select novels narrated in the first person present. I really don't like such volumes, and yet I seem to find myself frequently picking them up because the blurb interests me, only to later discover the tense and person - tensely and in person! It seems that the bulk of this particular tome is to be first person present, but some of it is third person, such as the part which describes Clairmont's visit to Bishop's home (actually "rooms" she's staying in at the college). Evidently vampires in this novel do not need to be invited in.

I also came across an interesting writing problem - how do you deal with words which are broken and hyphenated over two lines when the word itself contains a hyphen?! Harkness used the word 'to-dos' (as in 'to do list'), but it was broken between one line and the next, making it look like the word was 'todos' (almost the same as the Spanish for 'all' in the plural) and had merely had the hyphen show up artificially because of the line break. It was actually confusing for a second before I realized what the word was supposed to be - but how to avoid that problem? And is it a problem or am I just being anal about the English language? Hey, this is a writing blog: I’d be delivering less than I promised if I didn’t obsess over these issues, now wouldn't I?!

Bishop goes rowing to relieve stress, but she takes out a single scull which is less than 12 inches wide! It would seem that it's tailored to someone suffering from anorexia, not for a healthy and physically fit young woman. I know those boats are deliberately narrow, but the immediate impression this gave to me (rightly or wrongly, misunderstood or not) was that Bishop was unnaturally thin! This is an area where the writing might have been a little better planned IMO! But maybe it's just me?!

Back to the story! So Bishop claims she knows nothing about vampires, but she actually knows a lot, and was friendly with a vampire scientist in Geneva. She discovers that Clairmont is predictably protecting her. At that point I was reduced to hoping that this novel would not be yet another tale ostensibly about a strong female protagonist, but who in the end turns out to be nothing more than another weak women who desperately needs a powerful man to shelter her. My hopes were forlorn.

Bishop finds herself being stalked by vampires, wizards, witches and demons. Why the men are sometimes described as wizards rather than witches goes unexplained. It’s obviously the genderist Harry Potter factor leaking in. Clairmont tells her that it's because of the manuscript and Bishop's personal power that these people are drawn to her. One day when at lunch, she's visited by an Australian demon called Agatha Wilson, a woman who is supposedly a fashion designer. Then she disappears and we hear nothing from her (at least as far as I read). She bemoans the sad lot demons have to endure - unpredictably born of human parents, who often reject and abandon them. They have no heritage and no status, as witches and vampires do. She begs Bishop to share the content of the manuscript if she ever takes possession of it again, and Bishop agrees.

Clairmont invites her to a yoga class with him, and it's held in a sixteenth century manor out in the country - a manor which Bishop discovers was built by Clairmont, proving that he's at least five hundred years old (he's actually more than a thousand years old). The class is run by an Indian witch named Amira, and is, to Bishop's surprise, attended by vampires, witches and demons - and no humans. It's a pleasant change for her to be surrounded by these people and not feel under pressure or threatened as she has been when bugged by them in the library. What the point was of this is a complete mystery (as least for the first two hundred pages), since this yoga and fellowship never enters into the story.

Harkness unaccountably and repeatedly makes a distinction between "human" and witch/vampire/demon. Given that demons are born of humans, and given that vampires are fully human right up until that fatal bite, and that witches are human, period, I don’t get what she thinks she's distinguishing here. It could have been addressed with more clarity and/or better writing. Later Harkness tries to address this with allusions to mutations and chromosomal differences, but the 'explanations' are confused at best and silly at worst.

I gave Harkness the benefit of the doubt regarding whether Ashmole wrote in English or in Latin, but I guarantee you that Miryam, sister of Moshe (whom you might know as Mary, sister of Moses) did not write poetry in English! Even if we're expected to understand that the poetry was very loosely translated, Miryam did not have a modern concept of hours, and I'm guessing she had no idea what a chain was, so the poem makes no sense. As with so many Biblical characters, the name we know them by today wasn't the name they were originally given in Biblical fiction; neither Miryam nor Moshe were Hebrew names. The whole story is probably of Egyptian origin, not Hebrew. What is interesting is that Matthew has a vampire friend Miriam, who is helping him to bodyguard Bishop. Nothing is said about whether she's the Miryam who supposedly wrote that poem!

That's actually part of the problem: Nothing is said. We learn much about Bishop and Clairmont, but nothing about any other character. It’s like the rest of the cast is merely a sounding board to amplify the voice of the two main characters, which means this is a bit one-dimensional. We’ve met a witch called Gillian who seems furious with Bishop for no good reason. We meet Peter Knox, a very powerful witch who wants to get his hands on the manuscript, like everyone else. He tries to warn bishop off Clairmont.

Harkness would have us believe that Diana Bishop is a descendant of Bridget Bishop, the first so-called witch to be executed during the Salem witch trials, but Bridget was a Playfer before she was a Bishop, and she did not become a Bishop until her third marriage, which took place when she was in her mid-fifties. It was highly unlikely that there were any offspring from that marriage. If Diana is descended from one of her previous marriages (which did bear offspring), then why the fuss about her 'Bishop' name? Again, it's poor writing which makes no sense.

The love between Diana and Matthew grows predictably (no surprises there at all), but the sad thing is that once again we find ourselves in a story written by a woman, yet which revolves around a man subjugating/dominating/protecting a woman. Diana is scared and this is why she's attaching herself to him. She keeps making the claim that she can look after herself, but that claim is betrayed by her every action. And this is yet another novel where two characters need to exchange information - indeed, one of them wishes urgently to do so - yet they put off the exchange again and again! That's sad writing, but occasionally Harkness does offset this clunkiness with unintentional humor, like where she gives an initial impression that the rowing dock house is actually the striped color of the scarf which Matthew is wearing!

At about one-third the way through this novel, it became too tedious, repetitive, and boring. We continued to be treated (not really the right word, but nauseated seems cruel) to Bishop's 'dear diary' which consists of nothing more interesting than monotonous tales of her morning rowing, her pushing a stray piece of hair behind her ear (I'm not joking! The number of times this is brought up is laughable). She continues to visit the library where she tries, and fails this time, to get her hands on that manuscript. She's told that it has been missing for a century and a half, but she doesn't have the elementary smarts to have them look up her previous call slip and verify that she was delivered the manuscript! And that's it. Nothing else happens for insipid page after tiresome page after wearisome page, and I have other intriguing books waiting in the wings for this one to actually go somewhere, which it strongly promises not to do.

Matthew is cloyingly close, and other demons and witches show up at the library, vaguely threatening Bishop, and in the case of Knox, overtly so. Once again she betrays her claim to being able to take care of herself when someone leaves a plain brown envelope at the porter's lodge, evidently a joint effort between Knox and Gillian. She picks it up and opens it to find a color photograph of her parent's dead bodies, her mother broken, her father disemboweled, with his head stoved in. I guess they weren't such powerful witches after all.

Despite the fact that this occurred some two decades ago, Bishop is rendered into a jellyfish. I found that unbelievable given what we'd so far been told. It seemed to me to be yet another assault on a woman by a woman! At this point, Clairmont effectively takes Bishop hostage, refusing to take no for an answer, and eventually she lets herself be subjugated to this brute of a control freak, takes his sedative pills and passes out.

So first they decide to go to Africa where her parents were killed, then they decide to go to Paris where Clairmont has an ancient manuscript (why? who knows!); then we're treated to several tedious pages of Clairmont's ancient history extolling his virtues in 1777. Yawn. We also learn that this control maniac is not going to inform Bishop of the results of her DNA test (run to see where she stood in the hierarchy of witches). It was at that point I decided I no longer had any interest whatsoever in this tedious tale, and especially not when it more than likely involves reading another four hundred pages of dreary drivel of this nature. This is a definite warty.