Tolog Review: The Book of Life

The Book of Life
by Deborah Harkness
reviewed by Morgan Claire Close

Have you read a book about vampires? Have you read a book about wizards and witches? Well if you have put all you think you know about them away, because this story isn’t like those stories. The witches and vampires aren’t anything like you might read in the young adult novels. The witches and wizards aren’t like the ones you might read in Harry Potter. The vampires don’t sparkle like they do in the Twilight Sage, and they aren’t anything like Dracula. The Book of Life, the third book in the Discovery of Witches series, by Deborah Harkness is a thrilling love story between to unexpected lovers. 

The two main characters in this story are Diana Bishop, a powerful witch, and Matthew de Clermont, a fifteen hundred year old vampire. They have been on a long journey together since the first book, Discovery of Witches, when they first met. Then their journey took an unexpected turn into the past in the second book, Shadow of Night, but you will have to read those to find out what I mean. But in this part of their journey together so many unexpected turns happen, and when something bad can happen, it usually does. 

This book starts out with Matthew and Diana coming back to the present. They are recently married, which is a problem in itself because creatures aren’t supposed to mix and get married, and Diana just found out she is pregnant with twins, which isn’t supposed to happen. Vampires and witches can’t have children, but Diana and Matthew both have things about them that are different than the other species of creature they are apart of. Matthew has blood rage, which is a vampire disease that affects emotions and their thirst for blood, and Diana is a weaver, a creator of spells. This combination of creators, specific type of creators, is the only ones who can have children together. 

Matthew and Diana face many obstacles in their first year of marriage. The leaders of the creators, the Congregation, are mad and put different challenges in Matthew and Diana’s way. Also one of Matthew’s vampire sons, Benjamin, wants to impregnate a witch to build an army of vampire-witch children. Matthew leaves twice to fight off family and the Congregation. Another reasons that Matthew leaves is to go fight his brother to create a new scion, a new vampire family, but this one will have vampires and witches.