Recently Read: Shadow of Night

I finished Shadow of Night by Deborah Harkness, which is the sequel to A Discovery of Witches which is reviewed here. This book is equally as large as the first one in the trilogy.

 

This book started off a little slow for me. As you know, Diana and Matthew were about to time walk to Elizabethan England at the end of the first novel and that is the setting for this novel. There are a lot of new characters introduced in the beginning of this novel, and it was a little difficult to keep their names straight, as well as who was a creature and what type of creature they were. There is a list at the end of the novel which lists characters and if they are a creature or not, which was helpful. After I got the characters down pat, I started to really enjoy the novel. Elizabethan England is not a very common setting for the novels I read, so I enjoyed the time period and the surroundings for the novel. The novel also offers small peeks at what is going on with Matthew and Diana's families in the present, and gives a lot of insight into Matthew's past as well as his family's past.

 

Many new characters are introduced in the novel which really added to the story. So much happens in this book, though some of the events feel unconnected to the overall plot of the book. There are a couple of twists through out the novel; it wasn't as predictable as I expected it to be. There are a lot of location changes which can complicate the story, but the ambiance was really great. I will defiantly be reading the third book in the trilogy when it comes out, and I recommend this book to anyone who read and liked the first novel.