Title: Shadow of Night (All Souls #2)
Author: Deborah Harkness
Publisher: Viking 2011
Genre: Fantasy
Pages: 574
Rating: 5/5 stars
Reading Challenges: Finishing the Series; Monthly Keyword - Night; Dancing with Fantasy and Scifi - Magical Law Enforcement
Picking up from A Discovery of Witches’ cliffhanger ending, Shadow of Night takes Diana and Matthew on a trip through time to Elizabethan London, where they are plunged into a world of spies, magic, and a coterie of Matthew’s old friends, the School of Night. As the search for Ashmole 782 deepens and Diana seeks out a witch to tutor her in magic, the net of Matthew’s past tightens around them, and they embark on a very different—and vastly more dangerous—journey.
The further journey of Diana and Matthew, but this time, we’re in 1590 Europe. Goodness! I was very excited to finally read this second book in the series. Once i dove in, I didn’t want to stop. I loved the larger storyline and all the great characters (both historical and fictional) that we met. I especially loved the various witches Diana meets in London. On a more negative note, I really didn’t like Matthew until about halfway through the book. He was too distant, too much the alpha male, too guarded with all his secrets. He came off as an arrogant asshole and I was not interested at all. Thankfully things turned more positive after their official mating. From there, he started to actually remind me of the Matthew that we met in the first book. All in all, it was a good addition to the series even if I think Harkness could have probably shaved off at least 75 pages.
All Souls Trilogy:
#2 Shadow of Night
#3 The Book of Life
Next up on the TBR pile: