I figured out why I like these books by Deborah Harkness so much. I had a hard time getting into the first one because I didn’t like the main character, Diana. Then she met Matthew, a fifteen hundred-year-old vampire who’s way more interesting than Diana, and that was when I started to get invested in the book. As I said in my review of the first book, I think Diana is much more interesting when she’s with Matthew, and this holds true for the second book as well.
Matthew is very controlling. I could never put up with him because he would drive me absolutely crazy. Diana accepts it as part of who he is, but that’s not to say she’s a doormat. She’s still a modern woman who’s accustomed to independence. Obviously she’s not physically strong enough to stop Matthew from doing anything, but Matthew loves her, so he never forces her to do anything she doesn’t want to do. She does have to verbally slap him around at times, and when she does, he backs off.
The side characters are just awesome. I can’t even pick a favorite. Meeting Matthew’s vampire father, Philippe, was a real treat. He was super scary at first and reminded Diana of a lion. That just further cemented my impression of him as Tywin Lannister from Game of Thrones. I kept picturing the actor who plays Tywin in the show when I was reading about Philippe. If you can imagine Tywin Lannister as a vampire, that’s exactly how terrifying this guy was.
Then there’s Gallowglass: a Scottish vampire who was made by Matthew’s brother. In their vampire family, that makes him Matthew’s nephew, so when he learns Matthew has married Diana, he starts calling Diana “Auntie”, which I just thought was adorable. Mary Sidney is also a force to be reckoned with and then Diana decided to adopt a plucky orphan with a dark past who’s too smart for his own good. I enjoyed reading about each and every one of them.
I’m glad Diana finally started to learn about her powers. I found it hard to believe in the last book when they explained most witches are either waterwitches, firewitches, earthwitches, or airwitches, and Diana just happened to be all of those. Oh, and she’s a timewalker. WTF? Why do these stories always have to revolve around THE MOST POWERFUL (ENTER POWERFUL BEING HERE) EVER! Why can’t an interesting witch just be an interesting witch? She’s pregnant with a vampire’s child and that’s supposed to be impossible, isn’t that enough to make her noteworthy?
Harkness explains a lot of Diana’s super-supernatural powers in book two. She’s not actually a firewitch, she just gets to borrow that power when the goddess feels like granting it to her. She’s actually a waterwitch and a weaver (someone who makes up their own spells, rather than being able to cast the spells of others), and apparently only weavers are able to bear vampire children.
Weavers are rare, but there are others and it makes sense for them to exist, because someone’s got to come up with the spells, right? So I’m willing to buy that. I’m even willing to buy that there’s something special about weavers that lets them bear vampire children because what the hell? I’m already reading about witches and vampires. How much more of a stretch is it to imagine that, with the right genetic combination, the two of them can make babies together?
What do you guys think? Is Harkness asking us to suspend our disbelief too far? Or will everything make perfect sense after reading the final installment of the trilogy?