A Discovery of Witches - Deborah Harkness

Deep in the heart of Oxford’s Bodleian Library, Diana Bishop – a young scholar and the descendant of witches – unearths an enchanted alchemical manuscript.  Wanting nothing to do with sorcery, she banishes the book to the stacks.  But her discovery has set a fantastical underworld stirring, and soon a horde of daemons, witches, and other creatures descends upon the library.  Among them is the enigmatic Matthew Clairmont, a vampire with a keen interest in the book.  Equal parts history and magic, romance and suspense, A Discovery of Witches is a mesmerizing and addictive tale of passion and obsession that reveals the closely guarded secrets of an enchanted world.  (Back cover)

I’m on a short vacation right now, so I chose to read something very light and escapist.  I don’t want to think about anything too deeply, and this book fit.  I’m a big fan of magic in fantasy literature, so I found this interesting enough.  Another thing that I liked about it was that it dealt a lot with books and libraries.  Magic, books, and libraries – a winning combination. 

Although the book is a hefty 718 pages (mass market paperback), the back cover says about all it actually is.  The heroine, Diana, has been living in denial and suppressing her powerful magical abilities since a very young age.  She turns to the world of academia where she feels that she can accomplish much without needing to use any magic.  But she can’t escape her true nature.  So one day, she finds her hands on an enchanted manuscript.  She didn’t know, however, that for centuries all sorts of creatures have been searching for this tome, having each their own desperate agenda relating to it.  So when she opens the book, other creatures felt its magic as well and soon Diana is being hounded by other witches, daemons, and vampires.  And of course, once a vampire enters the picture, we all know how everything will turn out.  Yep, they fall in love.  Surprise, surprise. 

Matthew Clairmont is your average fantasy vampire.  Around and about him the author uses words like enigmatic, magnetic, tall, dark, mysterious, princely, knight-in-shining-armour, and the like.  You get the drift.  This vampire turns out to be scientist, too.  He is very curious about the genetics behind the different creatures out there – humans, vampires, witches, daemons, etc.  Turns out that the book Diana found may hold the key to his search for the answers he wants.  But of course, there’s a whole lot more they have to deal with.  Suddenly Diana is in terrible danger and Matthew then plays the role of protector.  As their relationship progresses, they find that a lot of things stand in the way of their romance.  Matthew carries a whole lot of history with him – 1500 years of it, to be exact.  Diana has to deal with that.  Then a long-ago covenant made between vampires, daemons, and witches actually forbids inter-species fraternization.  Add to that Diana’s raw magical power spilling out of her uncontrollably, coupled with a troubled past that she has yet to resolve.   So our pair has quite a lot on their supernatural hands. 

What made the book as long as 718 pages?  It was something pretty likeable and interesting, actually.  History, literature, and science.  Since the two protagonists are both scholars, and one of them apparently lived through all 1500 years of history, you get a crash course in those three fields of interest as you follow their tale of “the two of us against the world.”   Although the plot is basic and predictable, I did enjoy going through the crash course.  After all, you’d never get your genetics, physics and chemistry, literature, and history classes spiced up by romance, adventure, and suspense in a university course.  There’s an idea.  Why not throw in a magnetic, brooding vampire and a captivating, intelligent witch into a microbiology lecture?  I’m sure fewer students would be falling asleep as the professor drones on. 

So did I enjoy the book?  Yes.  It fit what I was looking for at the time.  I finished it in two days – all 718 pages of it.  Like I said, it’s light and doesn’t really require much of deep thinking.  You just sit back, imagine yourself in the wonderful world of Oxford, or a medieval castle in France, or surrounded by spectacular books in a great old library.  And oh, don’t forget to imagine yourself surrounded by unnaturally gorgeous peoples.  There.  Plus, I enjoyed the scholarly parts of the story, too.  I tend to read very fast when I’m actually having fun with the book.  So if you think all that’s appealing, then try the book and I hope you enjoy.   

Lament of the Lamb (OVA 2003)

Based on a manga called 羊の歌 or "Song of the Sheep", the story revolves around a boy named Kazuna who begins to suffer from a strange illness.  He remembers being left behind by his father as a young boy to the care of an uncle and his wife.  In order to find out more about his strange condition, he seeks out his father and discovers that he has died and that he has an older sister with the same illness.  She reveals to him that they are a family afflicted with vampirism.  Thus begins the two siblings' painful journey of accepting their fate, confronting the demons of their past, and trying to separate themselves from the rest of humanity in order not to become monsters that constantly crave blood.  They try to live together and to find solace in their shared suffering, but in the end they could only succumb to the terrible conclusion that awaits their lives. 

I rather liked this anime at the beginning.  I felt like it had really good atmosphere, one of mystery and sadness.  What was disappointing was the pace - it was simply too slow.  They could have told the entire story in half the time it took.  There were too many unnecessary flashback scenes, too many dramatic pauses, and repetition of other melodramatic elements.  It felt more like a Korean drama than a Japanese story.  Although the themes were touching and somewhat thought-provoking, the story would have benefited from a plot with more motion and eventfulness to it and less of the internal struggle from the characters.  It's not too bad, but sadly, I can't say it's on my list of favorites.

The Vampire Tapestry

I happen to love the idea of vampires, but when they became fodder for mass teenage hysteria, I had almost given up on them.  For a long time I thought I'd gotten tired of all this vampire business, and then I found this book -

WOW!  "The Vampire Tapestry" by Suzy McKee Charnas.

Every once in a while you encounter something so wonderful - it's almost miraculous.  I don't remember when it was that I read Elizabeth Kostova's "The Historian," but at that time I thought it was just the best vampire story I've encountered.  There was nothing cheesy and corny and sugary about it.  It didn't glamourize the image of vampires and turn them into teenage pop mascots.  The same is true with Charnas' take on this enigmatic image.  These two stories are about struggles with something much more than human control or comprehension.  They portray battles within the self, and with external conflicts.  A look within and beyond a nature that is too often immediately perceived as evil and unnatural.  What is evil?  How do we confront evil, both within and outside of our human nature?  Who are we to say what is evil and unnatural?  Are we not just as wicked as the monsters we label?  These two books go way beyond the question of love and immortality.  They make you look at what it means to be alive - human or not, to grapple with the humanity inside and not to become the monster that we all have hiding within our darkest fears.