2012 book 85

Deborah Harkness' Shadow of Night
I was pretty excited to read the sequel to Discovery of Witches, which was a very entertaining and only slightly silly book about a historian witch falling in love with a vampire.  I'd forgotten how Twilight-y the first one was in the interim (I mostly remembered the parts about libraries, apparently), and this one starts off in that vein as well. (Haha, vein. I didn't do that on purpose, even.) Anyway, the story starts with our mixed supernatural couple time-traveling to Elizabethan England for reasons that made sense in the first book, if I recall correctly (I might not). (That's not a spoiler, it happens on page 1.) The first third is kind of all over the place, but then things settle down nicely and the 1600s are pretty exciting as Diana and Matthew mingle with the famous names of the day (slight spoiler: my favorite historical personage from that era, Rabbi Judah Loew, makes a brief appearance with the golem!). Harkness did manage to surprise me with plot twists a couple of times, and even though I find Matthew mildly annoying, I really enjoy this series (especially Diana and her witchcraft and history nerdiness) and look forward to the third volume. B/B+.

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An e-galley was provided by the publisher. This book comes out in July.