“A reluctant witch. A 1500-year-old vampire. A mysterious
manuscript known as Ashmole 782. The story begins with a discovery of
witches...” (www.deborahharkness.com)
Copyright (C) Deborah Harkness
Diana Bishop and her handsome vampire Matthew Clairmont
successfully time-walked into Elizabethan England to find her a mentor and to
escape threats to her life. They also seek the manuscript in its original form,
before the missing pages turned the book into a rambling tumble of nonsense.
Diana and Matthew are plunged into the chaos of Elizabethan
England, and into the company of the enigmatic School of Night. She meets the daemons, Christopher Marlowe
(yes, the playwright Christopher
Marlowe) and Thomas Harriot (mathematician and astrologer), Sir Walter Raleigh,
and Henry Percy, the Wizard Earl. To complicate matters, Kit (aka Christopher Marlowe) is insanely in love with Matthew and Diana stands out like a sore thumb, despite being a historian. And the most complicated thing is that witches and vampires are prohibited to fall in love, according to rules of the Congregation. They also meet a whole host of interesting
characters such as Mary Sidney, Doctor John Dee, Queen Elizabeth I, and King Rudolf II of Bohemia (who had a disastrous infatuation with Diana).
As they try to trace the origins of Ashmole 782, they need
to go back to Matthew’s past as well. For the 14th century Matthew Clairmont
is not the cultured, learned geneticist that he is of the 21st
century. He was the spy, Matthew Roydon, and Matthew de Clermont, distinguished
member of one of the oldest vampire clans in the world, grand master of the Knights of Lazarus, and one of the vampires seated at the Congregation in the 1500s. We also meet members of Matthew's family and discover their origins: the De Clermont patriarch Philippe and his inimitable wife Ysabeau, the faithful Gallowglass, and Hancock.
Just as Diana begins to harness her surprising powers, betrayal and scandal find their way to them. With nowhere to go but the present, Matthew and Diana once more time-walk to the present and face their destiny.
I love how Deborah Harkness introduced each character despite having a lot of new characters and putting her central characters in a whole new setting. She injected flaws into otherwise austere characters like Christopher Marlowe and Rudolf II. Her character development for Philippe and Matthew was just exquisite that readers understand the complexity and depth of their relationship. I find myself devouring each piece of information about the characters and mentally try to fit them into a puzzle. The author meshes magic and history exquisitely, giving us a glimpse of life in the 14th century yet teach us about magic and spell weaving at the same time. Her descriptive prose transports her readers in the setting of her choosing, be it Oxford, New York, Bohemia, or Elizabethan England.
Shadow of Night is a rich and intricate of
tapestry that weaves together alchemy and genetics, magic and history, passion
and honor. A riveting book that will
leave you craving for the next one.
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