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The Book of Life – A Recap
I have completed Deborah Harkness’ All Souls Trilogy. I haven’t completed – and enjoyed – a series like this since…I can’t remember. Although I didn’t finish the third installment, The Book of Life, in time to discuss it within the bounds of my Summer Reading Challenge, I need to get my thoughts out about the conclusion to the trilogy, thus the odd (to me) title of this post. Here we go.
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Summer Reading Challenge 2016: Shadow of Night
I finished this book in one day. Sure, I had started the first couple of chapters at a different time but the rest was done on a recent dreary day when I could think of nothing else but finding out how Matthew and Diana would survive Europe in 1590. Because of course they survive; there is a third book to read after all!
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Summer Reading Challenge 2016: A Discovery of Witches
What makes this novel spectacular is not just its length; not just the invocation of hunger for the next sentence, the next page, the next chapter; and not just the web of characters who become suddenly connected although they have been that way all along; no, what makes this novel so spectacular, is Deborah Harkness’ use of the French language; deep knowledge of creatures outside the ordinary human species; the gut-wrenching, goosebump-inducing relationships; the historical wines and delicious descriptions of them; and, and, the unavoidable attention paid to art.