A review by lakeofstars
A Discovery of Witches by Deborah Harkness

mysterious slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

1.5

if you take away the extremely toxic romance, then there's a good story set in a Really interesting universe here. i adored the weaving of history, science, and magic, the fact that it focuses on two scholars, and that there's a big underlying mystery that actually requires the expertise of said scholars (a geneticist and a historian) to unwind. but then, all of it is shaped around a stupid, disgusting, unhealthy romance, and that ruins it all for me. matthew, the male lead, is extremely possessive, controlling, and manipulative towards diana, the female lead. he controls her every move, location, and even the people she can interact with. all of this is excused because he is a vampire who “can’t control his instincts” and has lived longer and therefore “knows what is best.” beyond the distastefulness of such a love interest being romanticized, i personally think that the concept of characters “just being born violently possessive and controlling, they can’t help it!” is… weird at best and bioessentialist at worst. i get it, he’s a vampire, they’re not meant to be sweet and cuddly, but it leaves a bad taste in my mouth when such toxic behaviors are not only excused, but defended within the text. it works in horror stories like carmilla (which was MILD compared to the way matthew treats diana sometimes), not in regular romances where we are expected to take such “boys will be boys”-esque excuses at face value. at least it seems like all vampires in this universe have these instincts, not just the males, which would make things significantly more problematic. but that doesn’t mean i’m ever going to accept that matthew’s abusive treatment of diana is “romantic.” additionally, i didn’t like matthew as a character. even beyond the toxicity, he was not nearly as charming as the author clearly wanted us to believe that he was. the amount of times i audibly scoffed because he was throwing another tantrum (a 1500-year-old man, btw), saying something that was supposed to be suave but felt cringey, or insisting his privacy was more important than diana’s was abysmal. 

also- ironically, considering the entire basis of her character is that she was forging her own path- diana had NO agency at any point. whether it was finding out her op magic had been guiding her all along, matthew dictating her every action, or other characters swooping in and saving her any time she is about to have to fend for herself, she doesn't DO anything!! oh, except for have a five-paragraph internal soliloquy about mundane activities like exercising or preparing tea every other page. thankfully, she does investigate a lot of things herself, but believe me when i say you have to trudge through chapters of her doing busywork and either thinking about or being bossed around by matthew before you get to see it. i don’t mind an overpowered MC if they’re written well, which i hoped diana would be, but she ended up being a typical mary sue who, despite being described as incredibly headstrong and independent, constantly bends to the will of and needs to be saved by the big strong male lead. i wish that this book was just about her because before she started dating matthew and everything came crashing down, i found her characterization and gradual acclimation to her new abilities to be compelling. 

but all of that aside, this book’s greatest sin is that it was boring. i was BORED reading a book about solving mysteries, about magic, about witches and daemons and vampires, about history, about science, about alchemy- about so many things i normally love. the novel barely focused on what made it interesting to me in the first place. it made what should have been high stakes seem inconsequential, considering the characters barely paid them any mind most of the time. if this author wanted to write a contemporary romance where a witch and a vampire drink wine and do yoga, then she could have written exactly that instead of sidelining the plot. the imbalance between the romance (notice how i didn’t say relationship development? that’s because there was barely any transition between “i trust him i guess” and “i’m in love with him and we are basically married”) and the main story was severe, and while this may not be a problem for someone who enjoys the romance genre more (and who can stomach such a problematic dynamic), it was a major turn off for me. a book can absolutely be primarily a romance without neglecting the rest of the plot, but unfortunately that was not the case here. and suddenly, at around the 80% mark, the author seemed to remember all of the other plot threads she had neglected and rushed to provide answers that should have been built up throughout the middle section of the novel. Love That! 

i also am just straight up not a fan of fertility/conception storylines, which this seems to be leading into for the next book. i'll read it because i AM invested, but... i'm scared.


 

tl;dr: pros- atmosphere, language/prose, worldbuilding (for the first half, at least). cons- pacing, character writing, relationships 
- this was originally going to be 2 stars, but i looked at the other books i gave that rating to and this is definitely worse than them. so... here we are.
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