Reviews with content warning for Violence - A Discovery of Witches

Good fantasy, with interesting world building and mystery. I liked the dark academia setting. I felt like conflicts within the plot happened and resolved very (almost too) quickly. But overall a good book for some escapism.

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u2u's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging mysterious medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? N/A
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.75

Loved this man, not usually into romances but this is more adventurous than anything. It’s slow at first and takes some time to think about what u have just read but besides that. 9/10

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maggies's review against another edition

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adventurous dark mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

Started reading the series primarily because I want to watch the show, and now I'm even more excited to keep reading the series! I think it might have benefitted from some editing down—lots of repetition of the same sentiment or even sentence in just a few paragraphs, for example—but overall a really engaging fantasy story. The world of the witches, vampires, and daemons is laid out for readers as Diana learns the details, which is a simple and effective trick for this kind of world-building. Docked a star because it's just not believable to me that the entire book takes place over less than two months.

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bodagirl's review against another edition

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medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No

3.0

This book kept my interest while reading, but didn't make me want to devour it. I think part of the issue is that the magic system and society are still being defined, as the POV is mostly from Diana, who has denied her heritage for so long, and Matthew, who keeps secrets from other characters and the reader. I'm also a little uncomfortable with Diana and Matthew's relationship; I'm getting the feeling that they are fated, which is fine, but the motivations for why they are drawn together at the start is really unclear. It started as "enemies to lovers" but within a few chapters it became some amorphous connection that

Spoiler

much later on turned into a possible fated mate situation

. I do appreciate that Harkness is stressing that Matthew comes from a very different age and his vampiric instincts make him act possessively, but it makes my modern sensibilities shudder a bit that Diana questions things so very rarely and often just accepts what she is being told.

The aspects of the story I really enjoyed were the historical elements that were woven in (though I wonder along with Diana how Matthew was able to know so many influential thinkers so well) and the idea that demons aren't actually from Hell, but rather randomly popped up as super creative or gifted people. However, the possible connection between "demonic" and some mental health disorders or the Autism spectrum in problematic, even though the demons we meet seem to be fairly well adjusted.

I grabbed the whole series from a used bookshop, so I will probably continue to see if it improves.

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