Hello everyone!
Been here, done that, and got the T-shirts I think!
Which isn't to say that I wasn't excited for this particular release, because I SO was.
However, as soon as I started digging deeper into the story and every piece started coming together, I slowly realized that it all seemed vaguely familiar.
Like I'd been here before, or dreamed of it some other time, and now was just remembering it once again.
This is unfortunate, because at the end of the day, I read books NOT to be repetitive, so that I can - and hopefully do - enjoy them as something new.
Tonight's choice isn't quite new, but it also isn't really old either, it's just somewhere in the middle ground of it all.
We're returning to the world of All Souls in The Black Bird Oracle.
And as I'm typing this, I have to think - did I ever do season recaps for the show while it was releasing? No? If not, I have to fix this, pronto. The adaptation of A Discovery of Witches was probably one of the most ON POINT ones I'd watched in the last decade or so. In an era when every showrunner seems to believe they can "improve" the author's work that they've gotten rights for, A Discovery of Witches remained eminently true to its source material (there were some deviations but, still less than nowadays).
In any case, we're back once again with Diana Bishop, seven or so years after the end of the original trilogy, and possibly only a handful of years since Time's Convert, the fourth book in the series. She's just preparing for a summer in the UK when a blackbird drops dead on her doorstep and some freaky tarot cards arrive with an invitation from a Proctor relative she'd never heard of, to "come home".
Now, to remind you: Proctors are her dad's family. She was raised by her aunt Sarah after her parents were murdered, and she's always had a very small nuclear family to begin with.
With this invitation, however, and the Congregation wanting to test her twins, Rebecca and Phillip, about their magical powers, Diana hot-foots it to Ravenswood, the name of the place the Proctors all seem to have grown up at.
This is where she meets her great-aunt Gwyneth, the current family matriarch, and a posse of other Proctors, suddenly realizing there's a whole HOST of family members she's never met or known about.
Also, their ghosts are much better upkept than the Bishop ones, and she can have daily conversations with them. Equally, for some odd reason, her mother's ghost is lurking around the Raven's Wood, the forest that gives the Proctors their ancestral powers, which makes no sense but alright, we'll run with it.
Diana begins to learn the art of higher magic, because apparently she hasn't done jack-squat with her powers - or the Book of Life residing within her - for the past seven years. Equally apparently, the bargain she made with the goddess at the crossroads back in the OG trilogy and already accepted she'd work higher magic and all that is now moot point, as we're doing it all over again.
A witch challenges Diana to some sort of witchy duel at the crossroads, which goes off the rails a little bit but Diana at least manages to patch together the ghost of her dad's twin sister, who'd apparently had an aptitude for higher magic but unfortunately committed suicide after supposedly not living up to expectations (our heroine notices what seems to be the tenth knot around her, though, which may or may not mean she'd been spelled).
To note here is the fact that, apparently, it's not the Bishops Diana gets her powers from - as we've learned through THREE WHOLE BOOKS - but the Proctors, who produce twins every other generation and one of those is a timewalker while the other does divination or some such.
More importantly here, however, is that the other witch runs to the Congregation about the whole crossroads debacle, so Diana is now under inquiry as well as her twins will be, which makes her even madder than before - right after she gets mad at Sarah (you know, the woman who raised her) about following the rules her parents had set up before they were killed (because who knows what Sarah could have done differently).
During all this, they discover that Rebecca, despite swearing to Stephen she wouldn't do higher magic anymore, actually kept on doing it throughout their magic, storing memories in her perfume bottles, but also that Diana has memory gaps from where her mom took them from her to keep her safe.
Again, something to be angry at Sarah for. Obviously.
This leads to the discussion that - after observing a nugget dropped by Peter Knox in a memory - other memories seem to be stored somewhere on the Congregation's island in Venice, so Diana embarks on a mission to get those that belong to her family. Along the way, she grabs one that's from the witch who ratted her out, has a run-in with a Congregation representative, and is put under reprimand, but that's beside the point since she DOES have the memory bottles now, and the Congregation doesn't seem to want to do squat about it.
... possibly because she's married to a De Clermont who may or may not rip their throats out if they try.
Our gang - who have all been spending the summer with the Proctors now, and Matthew's been uncomfortably forced into things he really would rather not, by way of his wife, who just keeps making decisions like she's still single and ready to mingle - realize that the witches have been practicing their own kind of genetic pooling, using the higher magic aptitude test to screen the best and the brightest and amass creatures with greater skills, in every generation.
Then of course, Satu pops up, as if we needed any more bad things from the past, because apparently despite the fact Diana wove a knotted spell around her, she's been freed, or freed herself, and to top it off found a weaver to teach her, so weavers suddenly aren't special anymore, either.
The test goes well enough, with Rebecca passing with flying colours - and should surpass her mom one day - while Phillip has a unique blend of genetics and gifts that the Congregation will be VERY pleased to hear about, supposedly.
Diana remembers a prophecy spoken by none other than her ancestor, Bridget Bishop, realizing that it speaks about her own twins, and that this is only the beginning of a new and dangerous road for her and her family. But, armed with her new knowledge - and a new family, and coven - she decides to face it head-on.
So must it be.
But I can't quite decide.
On the one hand, I love being back with the De Clermont-Bishops, because I've missed them. But everyone seems to have undergone a bit of a personality transplant, which I hate.
Matthew lacks his intensity, Miriam her sense of danger, Sarah is used as a punching bag for no real good reason, and the Bishops are replaced by the Proctors.
Now don't get me wrong. Stephen's family sounds lovely, but there's a lot of inconsistency regarding magic now. Particularly Diana's. We always knew she got timewalking from her dad, but higher magic from her mom Rebecca - a Bishop. In this book, the Bishops are suddenly relegated to the backseat, and Diana's Proctor legacy is more important and all-encompassing.
Also, Diana. Oh, Diana. She's becoming unlikeable. Not only has she apparently not done anything with her magic in 7 years, the goddess seems to have forgotten she'd chosen her to uphold justice and the scales in balance for her within the realm of creatures, plus we're rehashing things again to chase after her lust for more power.
More than that though, unfortunately it seems like Ms Harkness regrets having her marry and become a mother, because I'm sorry - but you just can't make life-altering decisions without consulting your partner or thinking about your family. YOU don't dissapear, this is true, but your identity becomes closely-woven into a unit - and yes, there is a you in unit. Diana doesn't seem to like having to think of others not just herself, and she commits some really awful deeds as a resut.
I might never forgive her for the labyrinth with Matthew (thanks Grandpa Tally for being there!) or how she treats Sarah, the person who raised her and provided for her. All Sarah ever did was follow the wishes of Diana's parents - why is SHE being faulted for it??
All in all, I give this book 2 stars for the nostalgia, great prose in that Ms Harkness always writes well, and the return to this world. But the rest is clearly lacking, and I hate how we're rehashing the same things all over again with the SAME characters. Seriously, the higher magic choice and Crossroads have already happened, and Satu should have stayed bound. This sudden addition of their being MORE weavers makes Diana's journey in the previous trilogy cheap and hacks big holes in the original plot.
The ending is also rather abrupt, with a big lead up and then a cut-off. Clearly, this book is meant to segue into the next, but it's a rough transition and not my favourite.
This book is a mixed bag. I might have to read the OG trilogy again to refresh on the greatness of it all. And possibly find good Baldwin fanfics along the way.
On the one hand, I love being back with the De Clermont-Bishops, because I've missed them. But everyone seems to have undergone a bit of a personality transplant, which I hate.
Matthew lacks his intensity, Miriam her sense of danger, Sarah is used as a punching bag for no real good reason, and the Bishops are replaced by the Proctors.
Now don't get me wrong. Stephen's family sounds lovely, but there's a lot of inconsistency regarding magic now. Particularly Diana's. We always knew she got timewalking from her dad, but higher magic from her mom Rebecca - a Bishop. In this book, the Bishops are suddenly relegated to the backseat, and Diana's Proctor legacy is more important and all-encompassing.
Also, Diana. Oh, Diana. She's becoming unlikeable. Not only has she apparently not done anything with her magic in 7 years, the goddess seems to have forgotten she'd chosen her to uphold justice and the scales in balance for her within the realm of creatures, plus we're rehashing things again to chase after her lust for more power.
More than that though, unfortunately it seems like Ms Harkness regrets having her marry and become a mother, because I'm sorry - but you just can't make life-altering decisions without consulting your partner or thinking about your family. YOU don't dissapear, this is true, but your identity becomes closely-woven into a unit - and yes, there is a you in unit. Diana doesn't seem to like having to think of others not just herself, and she commits some really awful deeds as a resut.
I might never forgive her for the labyrinth with Matthew (thanks Grandpa Tally for being there!) or how she treats Sarah, the person who raised her and provided for her. All Sarah ever did was follow the wishes of Diana's parents - why is SHE being faulted for it??
All in all, I give this book 2 stars for the nostalgia, great prose in that Ms Harkness always writes well, and the return to this world. But the rest is clearly lacking, and I hate how we're rehashing the same things all over again with the SAME characters. Seriously, the higher magic choice and Crossroads have already happened, and Satu should have stayed bound. This sudden addition of their being MORE weavers makes Diana's journey in the previous trilogy cheap and hacks big holes in the original plot.
The ending is also rather abrupt, with a big lead up and then a cut-off. Clearly, this book is meant to segue into the next, but it's a rough transition and not my favourite.
This book is a mixed bag. I might have to read the OG trilogy again to refresh on the greatness of it all. And possibly find good Baldwin fanfics along the way.
xx
*image not mine
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