reacherfan1909 reviewed on 4/1/2011

Helpful Score: 16

Well, I guess I'll end up being a nay-sayer here. I was both impressed and disappointed by A Discovery of Witches. The first 20 pages were great - brilliant - and introduced a genuinely novel hook, not just an enchanted 'lost' book, but a palimpsest. I was delighted. The book was returned to the Bodleian stacks of rare books and the promise of a great book was lost. What could have been an original became a Romeo and Juliet 'forbidden romance' story that plodded for nearly half of its almost 600 pages. Then in the last 150 pages the whole thing shifts gears and becomes something else entirely - and ends just as it was getting interesting again.

The single best word for this book was FRUSTRATING. The writing was excellent, the pacing glacial then hectic. Prof Harkness has a real gift for lush prose and descriptive settings, but it doesn't carry through to her characters. Certainly, her love of wine, and of Oxford, and the famous Bodleian comes through. But the real measure of a great book for me this - can I see where this is going, and is that route interesting? By page 100, it was obvious where the next 500 pages would go, and lush prose aside, the forbidden romance thing was just not enough to hold me. But time travel - REALLY? GAHHHHHHH!!!!!!!! Did she miss a cliche?

Any way, this odd mix of really good and really ordinary got a C+ from me. And someone get her a ruthless editor. The book needs to be trimmed by 150-200 pages to improve pacing and give the last 150 pages more space for development.

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