The Book of Life

I had some problems with the first two books, but it seemed like there was a serious drop-off in quality with this one. There were so many undeveloped or underdeveloped characters on the periphery that I had trouble keeping straight – and I'm a George R.R. Martin fan, so I don't have a problem with huge casts of characters if they're done well. My biggest issue with the book really was the relationship between the two main characters. Did I not notice the disturbing level of possessiveness in the first two books, or did it increase in this one? The entire book, I kept thinking, this is an abusive relationship, am I supposed to find this romantic? Ordinarily I wouldn't waste my time finishing, but I felt the need to finish the trilogy. Just disappointing.

A satisfying wrap to the trilogy, and some delightful new characters introduced in this book. Ysabeau is still a favorite, and things wrapped up so well. This book was certainly the darkest of the three. The big reveal seemed a bit anticlimactic but somehow fit with the action involved with the grand reveal.

Can't wait for the next book! I also hope there will be one on Gallowglass down the road.

I enjoyed book one, started to lose interest by book two, but thought I should plough on with the final act just to find out what happens. Goodreads star ratings imply this is the best of the trilogy, but I was not impressed. I'm not sure it was necessarily any worse or better than any of the other books, I think I've just had enough of Diana and Matthew's fervent kissing and brooding glances, and all the secret keeping. I started it in a bad mood and was apoplectic by the end.

Spoiler laden ranting starts here.

STUPID MAGIC SYSTEM - It's made abundantly clear on multiple occasions that Diana is a very special witch and as such cannot do spells - and yet, every time she thinks about doing magic she says something dumb like "I still think magic would be faster – so long as I can figure out what spell to use" YOU CAN'T USE SPELLS DIANA! In these occasions, she ends up not doing any magic, when it would be useful. - The corollary of this is that the way she can do magic - again, which was made abundantly clear in book f***ing two - is to just 'wish' or 'want' or 'desire' something, and it happens. Of course, this happens for stupid and pointless things, like rearranging coats when she wants to go to sleep, or floating up the stairs when she's rushing to see Jack, or opening a locked door - but never when it would actually be useful or helpful i.e. all the times she's trying to think of spells, plus other times like when she wants to get off a boat in Venice and it's slippery and she can't "figure out a solution". How about you fly, like you did about 3 pages ago for no reason? I hate these kinds of badly thought out magic systems. They always do this - magical solutions mentioned in passing for utterly pointless things and then totally absent when problems arise. - For example, getting the Ashmolean book. At what point in the library did she think of - duuur - maybe just "wanting" to have the book in her hand?!! NEVER! Can't she just apparate it into her hand, from home? If not - perhaps the summoning magic only works at short distances - surely she could do it when she's actually in the library itself? No! Of course not. Here are the amazing plans that these apparent Yale professor geniuses and thousand year old vampires come up with: 1. Send a request in a vacuum tube - in the middle of the night, when no one is working, and therefore no one will be at the other end to open the vacuum tube and go find the book. This not only doesn't work, but they sit around for two f***ing hours waiting for it to work, before deciding that possibly it hasn't 2. Doing a little group spell with salt and hand holding and reciting words (reminder - you can't do spells, Diana!). After doing the ritual and it doesn't work they then decide to sit around for another hour, I don't know, to see if it beds in a bit?!! 3. Ask the firedrake to 'sniff it out', like a dog. - The end result of Diana only thinking about spells and then never doing magic is that we're reading a book about a super powerful witch who has been prophesied for generations - there are paintings of her in London, everyone knows her, she's the saviour of witchdom - but who does nothing magical. Nothing magical of interest from a story perspective, anyway. Surely one of the best things about supernatural books is enjoying watching characters with special skills doing something special. Three whole books - 1,000 pages - and she does nothing of any consequence except right at the end. What's the point? - Finally, for 95% of the books magic has no consequence, it's all free, who cares, magic this, magic that, there are no rules to how much can be done... Oh no, suddenly we need it to be difficult because after Diana has taken an age to 'build' a spell to kill Knox (again, can't she just "will" it rather than making up a stupid rhyme?) - slowly enough for him to have noticed, by the way, but rather than counteract it he just stands there goading her and getting increasingly worried - it's all too easy, we need her to be exhausted so that there is now peril when she goes to fight Benjamin, so now we get the whole "Magic, like any resource, is not infinite in its supply" and she's super tired. So now she doesn't float up the stairs, she just runs, and when she gets face to face with Benjamin... That's right, she magics him to death as well. LOL. So not that tired, after all, I guess? So the concept of restriction is introduced right at the end - and then totally ignored.OTHER RANDOM STUPID PLOTTING THAT DROVE ME CRAZY - The sudden description of Diana's photographic memory that has never been mentioned in two and a half books - and when it is, she's complaining how her photographic memory is "failing" to work. Which doesn't really seem to be a facet of a photographic memory. You either look at something and remember it, or you don't. - Chris, the devilish but human best friend scientist dude, says at one point: "I'm a scientist. I'm trained to suspend disbelief and remain open-minded until something is disproved." THIS IS NOT THE WAY SCIENCE WORKS. In fact, it's the total opposite. You're supposed to not believe until the evidence is presented. Sounds like this 'genius' Chris probably also believes in the Loch Ness Monster, fairies at the bottom of his garden and Russell's teapot. - Not only does Chris not know how science works but this idiot's character USP is that he loves nicknames. There's one scene in the lab with him and his team and I was lost within 2 pages because 8 people are all introduced with their real names, and then given nicknames, and then I'm struggling to understand who the hell anyone is for 5 pages before I gave up caring and it really didn't make any difference because the whole 30 page chapter was a waste of time anyway. - Miriam calls Matthew - a vampire, who doesn't sleep - at 3am and Diana panics, knowing for sure it must be an emergency because it's so early. I'm sure Matthew makes and receives all sorts of calls throughout the night that Diana is unaware of, because she's sleeping and he is not! - Whilst trying to get the book, Diana has a totally weird and implausible reaction to the idea of releasing Corra in the library. The act of releasing her familiar is apparently some kind of 'heavy' magic that will mean "the last remaining links to my life as a scholar would dissolve". This just doesn't make any sense. She timewalked back to the 16th century FFS, she's a witch, she's been learning and coming to terms with being a witch for the best part of 3 books, but apparently this is a step too far. It's just ridiculous nonsense. - Also, this firedrake now apparently speaks, and is actually really mad about being enslaved to Diana... Hold on a minute, isn't Corra her 'familiar'? Aren't they bound together in magical harmony, or some kind of weird symbiotic relationship? No, apparently not, Diana seems to be holding her hostage, and Corra has really been wanting to leave this whole time. Does this apply to Granny Goggins's (or whatever she's called) 'shadow' from 16th century London? Is this 'shadow' also a disgruntled slave? - All the farting about in the library (waiting 2 hours for the vacuum tube to work, waiting another hour for the spell to work) is suddenly critical because when they get out they've been gone for over 5 hours and Gallowglass has been milling around outside for all that time waiting to tell them that Matthew is kidnapped! "hich is so urgent, and yet, then they travel to Sept Tours, and then to Venice, and Poland, and mill around - so maybe that 5 hours was not that important, after all? By the time they rescue him Matthew had been tortured for weeks. - After going to the Congregation and getting them to agree to Matthew's rescue, Diana sends a clever cryptic text message to Hamish with the code "QGA" in case anyone was monitoring their communications. But who would want to do that? Someone who shouldn't know that the rescue might go ahead, presumably, who is Benjamin. But... don't they suspect that Benjamin working with Gerbert and Domenico, so if they're doing military texts it can only to be hiding information from them... BUT THEY ARE IN THE CONGREGATION - THEY WERE PART OF THE VOTE! So they already know! So why have a whole clever message system in the first place? I suspect so that we could have a whole page of similarly dumb text messages all with allusions to chess pieces... Oh, hold on, sure enough 6 pages later here is Diana actually acknowledging that "Gerbert might already have warned Knox that I had won the vote" so even she knew it was stupid, but did it anyway. - Arriving at the place where Benjamin is holding Matthew, the vampires go off to find and kill the baddie vampires who are surrounding the compound. It takes them an hour to kill them all. We're racing against time, but this took an hour. Then they suggest there are just as many stationed inside but Baldwin doesn't seem worried. Cool, it'll just take another hour to kill them, I guess (and then they are never mentioned again, were they even there?) - These mega brains from Oxford and Harvard and Yale - plus the group of scientists they've wrangled in from Chris's class, one of whom is like a computer scientist or something (not a biologist) because it's specifically pointed out they want people who have unique and crazy ways of looking at the data - have all of the creature DNA but did not think at any point that it might be interesting to compare them with each other? Surely the most basic first step that anyone would ever think of? They're supposedly trying to work out what links daemons, vampires, witches and humans so wouldn't a comparison of the DNA be a good place to start? Like, surely anyone you asked who knew nothing about genetics would say that as their only idea. But no. These crazy nicknamed fools are too clever and have to wait for Diana to suggest it, so that the reveal occurs nicely at the end of the stupid book. - 500 pages in and we have to have 20 page description of the labour of the twins and the subsequent christening? Was this really necessary?!

FINAL SCORE

I gave this 2* originally but writing all of this down has infuriated me further so now I give it 1*

This was only the second audiobook I've ever listened to. I loved it!! What a great end to a fabulous series (although I think there should be more). Diana is pregnant with twins, and she can't keep it a secret any longer. Matthew will also have to tell his secret, he has blood rage. Both of these secrets violate to Covenant, and antiquated set of rules governing creatures. The search continues for the Book of Life, and the search for Matthew's psycho son Benjamin. They must find the Book, figure out why they were able to conceive, stop Benjamin's torture, and convince the Congregation to help. This book was soooo good! I love Deborah Harkness, and am becoming an audiobook fan as well. I would love to hear more narrated by Jennifer Ikeda, she is great to listen to.

This sits somewhere around a 4.5 for me but I'm rounding up.

It's a lot darker than the other books and really focuses on creature politics, but you also get glimpses into what the more mundane parts of Diana and Matthew's life could be like. There are big themes of accepting who and what you are, regardless if you like those parts of yourself.

Overall I still enjoyed it, even after multiple rereads. But there's a lot going on. A lot of info dumping and things wrap up very fast and out of nowhere towards the end. You get a lot of answers to big questions from throughout the series but because it's so quick that they don't quite make an impact.

A satisfying end to the core trilogy but with room for more.

Probably the book I've been most excited to read for a long while. It did not disappoint. Completely in love with it.

“Think and stay alive.”


Slight spoilers below:

Love that Harkness subverts the damsel in distress theme. Diana does not walk into danger blindly despite being totally obsessed with Matthew. She listens to advice. Such good character development from the first book.

Harkness does not muddy up her book with by over-explaining every unusual detail. She knows her readers will just figure it out, even the more abstract magical ideas, and I love her for it.

Also, there are some truly hilarious lines that had me laughing out loud. From almost every character.

I just want to give Gallowglass a big hug.

So much room to go in this universe? Are we sure it's just a trilogy?

Love this series. Highly recommended.

I only had two complaints about this book.

1. The overuse of the word ‘astonishment.”

2. Blood craft was mentioned but never explained, I guess the reader is left to assume what it may mean when considering the Book of Life is. In reality, we learned very little about the book after it was finally recalled.

After reading some of the other reviews on here, I think she may be setting up for a sequel trilogy, not a Gallowglass spinoff. With some things left hanging, like Gallowglass and the actual purpose of Phoebe and blood craft etc, there's no reason not to write it.

Honestly, I just don't want to leave this world or characters behind.