A Discovery of Witches

I read A Discovery of Witches by Deborah Harkness.

The goodreads.com synopsis starts "A richly inventive novel about a centuries-old vampire, a spellbound witch, and the mysterious manuscript that draws them together."
And it gets worse from there.

It's the first book in a series. Unfortunately I didn't know that when I started it. The whole waiting for authors to finish writing their series thing is kind of annoying.

Anyhow, on to the book!

As bad as it sounds from the short descriptions it wasn't awful. I think the writing could have used a little help because I have, pretty much, no emotional connection to the characters and I noticed that early on. Once I realized I was starting to get bored I planned to read a little bit more with the stipulation that if the main character, Diana, didn't start acting like a real person I was going to stop. But then, luckily (for the book), the story got interesting so I decided to keep reading.

As the book progresses Diana starts to be a little less perfect. Or maybe not less perfect but you, and she, learn that she's achieved so much early in life because she has inadvertently been using her powers to get herself ahead. And as she starts using her powers more she encounters a few bumps in the road. So knowing that she has some failings made me warm up to her a little bit.

At the end of the book the main characters are holed up in an old farmhouse just waiting. And that's what it seemed like in the book. No real plot movement just trying to fill up empty pages (that's when I started to suspect that it might be part of a series).

As for the romance part of the story, I'm glad they didn't fall in love in two days. That would feel cheap and contrived. But I would have liked to see more signs of their attraction before the declaration of love was made. Especially something other than their physical attraction. While a vampire will always remain perfect, for the rest of us beauty fades. And we know that building a relationship on physical attraction is not sound.

Overall the story is interesting. Not nearly as drama laden as the twilight series so don't let comparisons between the two fool you. As for the ending, I can understand stretching things when you're trying to build a series but since I don't feel for the characters I really don't care what happens to them, I just want to know how it ends.