Tag Archives: the book of life

I pretty much liked “The Book of Life”

Deborah Harkness' "The Book of Life"I read Deborah Harkness’ “A Discovery of Witches” way back in 2011, for the BlogHer book club. It was a pretty weird book about vampires, witches, demons (spelled “daemons,” which irrationally annoyed me) and historical documents, and I loved it.

I was excited when I learned that it was the first book in a planned trilogy, so I read the follow-up, “Shadow of Night,” as soon as it came out. I picked the final book, “The Book of Life,” up this week when I spotted it on the shelf at the library. “The Book of Life” came out in July, which is indicative of how much I enjoyed the second book. (Spoiler: Not very much.)

“The Book of Life” was a very slow-starter, but the action picked up about halfway through. Once it finally took off, I enjoyed it enough to delay making dinner and then stay up far, far too late reading it. And then today I let the kids have extra computer time so I could finish.

“The Book of Life” is a pretty weird book about vampires, witches, demons (still spelled “daemons,” which still irrationally annoys me and also there weren’t enough of them in this book), historical documents and genetics, and I mostly liked it. It was a satisfying conclusion to the trilogy, but but I found the romantic/obsessive bits wandering a little far into “Twilight” territory for my liking.