The second installment in the All Souls Trilogy is Shadow of Night by Deborah Harkness. What I like most about this series is that it is smart. The characters are smart and the author assumes that the reader has a somewhat high level of intelligence. Not all authors do that. I've read enough to know.
Shadow of Night follows Diana Bishop as she continues to pursue her magical education. Only one problem: there is no one who can safely teach her, not in this time anyway. Where A Discovery of Witches is a wonderful magical novel surrounding witches, vampires and demons, Shadow of Night becomes a historical novel following those same creatures in a time in which they aren't thought of as mythical. The possibility of walking into a witch hunt becomes a very real and very dangerous possibility.
While I know many people have become fatigued with stories of vampires, let me assure you this is very different. I love that Diana Bishop is a very strong female character. She stands up for herself and seems to know her own strength and worth. That alone makes this series different. These books are also fantastically complex. There are dozens of characters and so many twists and turns that I am surprised I can keep up. As I said, the Ms. Harkness expects her readers to be intelligent and her books are so much the better for it.
The final book of the trilogy is not yet out and I am waiting anxiously for it. There is no release date as of yet and so I must be patient. I know once I get word that it will be published, I will have to go back and reread the first two installments. Luckily for me they were so wonderful that won't be a chore at all. I actually can't wait to read them again!
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