Note: This is an old review I wrote but wanted to share on my blog.
I am so tired of vampires. I am tired of romanticized tales in which they watch women in their sleep. I am tired of their constant reminders to their love interests about how dangerous they are. I am sick and tired of vampires.
Mainly I don't think I can take them seriously anymore, which is probably why I was so amused by Mary Janice Davidson's "Undead and Unwed" series. While these were fluffy romance novels I respected the protagonist so much more. The author was clearly having fun with the genre and Betsy was a heroine who didn't go in for all of that stuff. She frequently mocked her own kind (vampires) for their sullen attitudes and though she had heart and loved genuinely she just seemed to make light of what other novels just try to push too dark. F*cking vampires.
So I can't entirely pan this book as it had some good points. The world in which Harkness has created for this book has a lot of potential. The basic premise is that of an alternate reality in which four types of "creatures" exist. Vampires, Witches, Daemons and boring old humans. Vampires are self explanatory. Pale beautiful sulky creatures who feed off of blood, seduce, captivate, mope and live in castles. Witches are a combination of magical beings, both male and female who use magic in their daily life and modern pagans who celebrate the harvests and the equinoxes. Damn, I wish just one day someone would write a book with a pagan character who did not have magical powers but observed it as naturally as any other character would celebrate their religion. Then there are Daemons who can be born to humans and possess a wild savvy, usually artistic or musical that they wield with an other worldly talent. Often Daemons are troubled as they can be born to humans who don't understand the magical world and therefore cannot explain what they are.
So our heroine, Diana is a Witch. Her lineage is that of the Bishops and the Proctors. The same who died in Salem village. However, due to traumatic events she refuses to practice magic and opts to live as a human. She is also an over achiever who has published books as a historian and studies alchemy texts of old, a move her aunt Sarah believes is ironic since she is a witch trying to live as a human.
While studying in Oxford, Diana encounters a bewitched text called, "Ashmole 782" and inadvertently breaks the spell without even trying. With this she attracts the ire and admiration of several creatures. This lost text is said to contain the origins of the creatures. This could have been a great story right here if not for the addition of a forbidden romance with, you guessed it, a vampire. Matthew Clairmont could have stepped out of the pages of any vampire book. Pale, handsome, lethal. He has a sad past which haunts him. He stalks Diana at first for information on Ashmole 782 and then of course becomes her possessive protector. I ran with it a while. The entire witch community is angered that Diana would share her knowledge of the text with a vampire and not them. While Diana rejects Matthew harshly at first she eventually warms to his presence and finds he is more trustworthy than the witches she encounters. I really wanted to know about this text. I wanted to know about the creatures. I wanted this world to be fleshed out so I could feel as if I could live and breathe within it.
What killed it for me was when the story took a turn to focus on the fact that due to an ancient covenant inter-creature love is forbidden. Then the angst began, the mooning the delay of physical encounters. Seriously, what is it lately with vampires and celibacy? Is it because they have so much time in the world they feel rushing between the sheets is unnecessary? And while Diana is a stronger heroine than the dreaded Bella from a book I don't even have to name, she falls victim to the same follies. Sure Diana looks Matthew in the eye and talks back to him. She challenges him. This is probably why he grew to care so much for her. I got that part. What I didn't get was what about him, other than the normal vampire stuff, she fell for. Is it because he is sad? Is it because she feels he is broken and she can fix him? Is it because her community forbids it? I just didn't buy it on her end. And any splash of personality? Anything that made me like her to begin with died as soon as Matthew professed his feelings to her. It was as if he was a moxie vampire than drained her of that spark that Matthew himself adored.
So while the premise was enticing and the research on various historical matters, including Ashmolean texts, was intriguing, in the end it just became yet another vampire romance novel.
**Addition** I just discovered that the author Deborah Harkness is a historian who herself uncovered a lost "magical" text while studying in Oxford. I love that the author is a true scholar and is dedicated to research. I adore that there is a certain autobiographical quality to the catalyst of the novel. It is a shame the love story got in the way.
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