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Wednesday, February 22, 2012

A Discovery of Witches

A Discovery of Witches by Deborah Harkness is .... possibly going to by my favourite novel. I say that a lot. That I LOVE book X or Y, and I do. Most of the books I post about on here I love, because... why else would I post about them?

Anyways the novel is full of appealing elements: Oxford, Oxford libraries hidden manuscripts, secret societies and artifacts, history, science and magic. Not to mention witches and vampires and demons (oh my.) (sorry).

The thing is, I should be annoyed at this book. The heroine is a little annoying in her denial of reality, the hero is so smugly old fashioned and the book is verging on a romance novel. But I don't hate the book. The exact opposite in fact. The other thing is every other person I've talked to about it have also loved it. One was my roommate (notoriously picky about anything fantasy related) (though we have similar tastes so...) (ok, we may or may not be reading the same copy, and may or may not be fighting over who gets it) (ok, I may or may not have kidnapped the book to Waterloo). Another was another librarian - the thing with that one though, is it happened in the middle of a job interview. I was asked what I was reading (a shockingly common (ok, not shocking at all) question in library job interviews) and when I mentioned this book the other librarian launched into how much she loved the book. And then we both proceeded to inform the other two people that they had to read it, because it is fabulous.

I'll say it again - this book is fabulous. I'm about halfway done, and already bemoaning the fact that the next one won't be published until this summer.  For the first time in a long time, I'm not just reading to read.  So do yourself a favour and go pick up this book.

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