Shadow of Night by Deborah Harkness

This is book two in this trilogy. Book one is A Discovery of Witches. In this book Diana and Matthew, hunted by the witches, daemons and vampires who would destroy them, timewalk to hide in history. Their mission is to find the Ashmole 782--the manuscript that started all this trouble-- and to find Diana a teacher who can help her to learn to control her magic.

I didn't like this as much as I liked the first one. It felt like a pause in the "real" story since Diana and Matthew spend this book working out the kinks in their relationship and meeting new people. Diana does learn about her magic in the last third of the book and they do find the Ashmole manuscript (oops! I guess that's a spoiler), but the hard-driving plot characteristics from the first book are largely missing in this one.

     There were some great things about this book. The part that I liked very best in The Shadow of the Night was meeting Matthew's father. I also always enjoy reading about marriage partners who encounters difficulties and overcome them as Diana and Matthew do. Again, this was a very long book--577 pages! I can only imagine the kind of work that it takes to write something like this! There were oodles of historical details and it was rather entertaining to meet some historical characters--Shakespeare, Christopher Marlow, Sir Walter Raleigh, and even Queen Elizabeth.
 
At the end of the book, even Diana and Matthew question whether timewalking was the right decision--whether they have changed history too much and should better have avoided such a large footprint in the past...and I think this conclusion rather invites the reader to agree with them. This book almost feels like filler material. Almost. But maybe I'm just in too much of a hurry to find out what happens in the end!

Language: A few foul words--2 or 3.
Sex: Plenty of married sex scenes and blood-sucking stuff, just like in the first book. Let me see if I can be more helpful in my review of the sexuality of this book: I read very few contemporary non-Christian romance, so I can't compare sex scenes to a standard romance, but I can compare them to "clean" romances. Clean romances generally have chemistry between the main characters and there will be kisses exchanged, but sex is only referred to after marriage and there are no descriptive sex scenes. This book does not meet that criteria.

My Recommendation: If you like magic and vampires and have a tolerance for mildly titillating married sex scenes, you will really enjoy this series. It's very well written, and full of "smart" stuff--history, science, poetry even!--and very engaging. I was into them from almost the first chapters and read them within two days. The characters are likeable, varied and three-dimensional. I really like both Diana and Matthew and I like them together--they seem real to me. I like the way their marriage is evolving. This series is not one I like so much that I feel I want to put them on my shelves and reread them regularly, but I have enjoyed reading these two books. The third in the trilogy is not yet published and I don't know that the story will stay with me long enough for me to actively pursue attainment of the final installment of the story. But if I happen to remember and it's easy enough to find the book when it's out, then I'll gladly begin another long and entertaining read about Diana, Matthew and their families.