From the blurb:
After traveling through time in Shadow of Night,
the second book in Deborah Harkness’s enchanting series, historian and
witch Diana Bishop and vampire scientist Matthew Clairmont return to the
present to face new crises and old enemies. At Matthew’s ancestral home
at Sept-Tours, they reunite with the cast of characters from A Discovery of Witches—with
one significant exception. But the real threat to their future has yet
to be revealed, and when it is, the search for Ashmole 782 and its
missing pages takes on even more urgency. In the trilogy’s final volume,
Harkness deepens her themes of power and passion, family and caring,
past deeds and their present consequences. In ancestral homes and
university laboratories, using ancient knowledge and modern science,
from the hills of the Auvergne to the palaces of Venice and beyond, the
couple at last learn what the witches discovered so many centuries ago.
With more than one million copies sold in the United States and appearing in thirty-eight foreign editions, A Discovery of Witches and Shadow of Night
have landed on all of the major bestseller lists and garnered rave
reviews from countless publications. Eagerly awaited by Harkness’s
legion of fans, The Book of Life brings this superbly written series to a deeply satisfying close.
Heather's rating:
What a huge let down this book was. I'm talking EPIC proportion let down.
First of all, I am shocked at all the positive reviews I'm seeing. I feel like we didn't read the same book.
A Discovery of Witches was one of my favorite reads of 2011. I wasn't as much into reading then, and I stumbled across this one while randomly perusing my library for books. I fell in love with the story, the characters, and the
magic of it all. I felt like the story was building up for something important, something powerful.
The second book was also pretty successful for me. It was lovely in the way that I find historical fiction is pleasurable. I also have a deep love of time-travel books, so I was practically guaranteed to fall head over heels.
A lot of time has passed since the second, and my expectations were sky high for the third. Unfortunately, the careful world-building fell to crap in the final installment.
I'll try to break down my main issues with the story without giving away any spoilers.
1) The POV switches: I have very specific opinions about lots of POVs in the a story: Namely, I hate them. This book had at least 5 different points of view, which irritated me to no end. Why not just two? Those extra points of view just seemed lazy to me, just a way for the author to do some "telling" and less "showing" about the characters. To make matters worse, the author switched from 1st to 3rd person throughout the book! Talk about a headache. It was a terrible choice, in my opinion.
2) The number of characters: This book was like a who's who from the previous two books. I swear, no one was left out. There were so many people re-introduced that I had a hard time keeping track of everyone. The story felt so... cluttered. All of these extra people and their minor storylines weighed the plot down so much. It became sort of jumbled and confusing. I'm not sure why the author didn't just keep her focus on the main characters.
3) The lack of secrecy: I'm so confused! In the previous books, Diana and Matthew guarded the secret of their relationship, the quest for the book, and the secrets of Matthew's family fiercely. In this book? They let it alllll hang out. They tell everyone EVERYTHING! Everyone seems to know what they are searching for, that Diana is pregnant, simply everything! I have no idea why this had them throwing caution to the wind. They freaking told an entire class of students what they were researching. It was madness. Then they are looking for the person "leaking their secrets"... it could be the pizza boy for all they know! It was truly bizarre.
Blurb:
