A Discovery of Witches

This book has a good premise, but the execution is not so great.

Diana Bishop is the daughter of two witches who were murdered when she was a child. Because of this she believes magic invites trouble, so she doesn't (or tries not to) use her own powers. Instead she becomes a historian of science, earns a PhD, and gets tenure at Yale. The story begins when she's at Oxford's Bodleian Library, looking at alchemical manuscripts. One of the texts she requests turns out to be bewitched. She hastily returns it to the stacks, but not before every “creature” (vampire, witch, or demon) in the vicinity notices that she has managed to call up a very important book that was supposed to have been lost for at least 150 years. Among these creatures is Matthew Clairmont, a 1500 year old vampire originally from France, now working as a professor of biochemistry at Oxford. He pays Diana a visit to find out what she knows...and the romance begins.

In many ways this is a straight up romance novel, with many romance novel tropes: independent, strong willed woman meets brooding, controlling man; forbidden love; independent, strong willed woman somehow needs rescuing all the time, to name a few. But it also wants to be a bit of an intellectual adventure. Matthew Clairmont is investigating the decline of creatures in modern times, so there's a lot of detail (I'm not competent to judge how accurate) about DNA research, tracing relationships between vampires, witches, and demons, and speculation about each species' origins. The lost alchemical manuscript is thought to shed light on these questions, which is why everyone is so eager to get their hands on it.

Then there is the question of why Diana doesn't seem to have the powers that her very powerful parents had. When she does try to use magic, it usually doesn't work very well, or she doesn't have control over it. Other witches are curious about her or suspicious of her, while she is exasperatedly trying to have a “normal” life. It becomes clear that she will need to look more deeply into what happened to her parents in order to understand her current situation, so this is also a bit of a coming of age story.

All of this is really appealing to me, but I wish it was put together better. Matthew and Diana are well rounded enough, but many of the secondary characters are flimsy. They pop up when M and D need someone to interact with, but they don't seem real in themselves. Sarah Bishop, the aunt that raised Diana after her parents were killed, is a lesbian, red haired and combative–that's about all we get. Other important characters get similar perfunctory treatment. There are many details and whole scenes which don't seem to further the story that I wish had been edited out. The overall effect is a jumble of undifferentiated blah-ness from which occasional scenes stand out as moving or interesting.

I will say that I liked the premise of the story well enough that I read the next two books in the trilogy hoping that the writing would get better. It didn't get much better, but I did confirm that I really liked the idea of this story. I won't be reviewing the other two books.