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Shadow Of Night (The All Souls Trilogy Book 2) by Deborah Harkness Review

Hi ForeverBookers, how are you all faring today? 

I've just finished a great book! It was a reread but I loved it WAY more than the other times I've read it. It was Shadow Of Night by Deborah Harkness.

5 Stars! 

The book is broken into 6 parts. This means that as the reader I didn't get lost in what I was reading as I knew where each part was taking place. For some present day chapters, they're the last chapter in a section but you can clearly tell they're set in present day because of the characters/settings etc.

Trigger warning: Shadow Of Night has moments of loss and moments of violence. It's an adult book anyway, but if you've experienced miscarriage or violence then this might not be the book for you. The miscarriage is only touched lightly on. It's not a huge part of the plot.

Spoilers below...

It starts just where A Discovery Of Witches finished with Diana and Matthew time travelling into the past, 1590 to be exact. 
They've travelled back to basically hide in history and for Diana to find a witch to teach her how to use her magic but a lot more happens...they meet Matthew's friends - The School Of Night, they meet Matthew's father Philippe de Clairmont, they get married by 16th century standards, Diana learns she has a protective firedrake within her, Diana and Matthew conceive a child together only to loose it, they find the elusive Ashmole 782 before it was broken, they learn what Ashmole 782 actually is and so much more. 

Diana learns that she's a weaver too, which only a certain few witches are. 
There are betrayals in Shadow Of Night also. In the form of Kit Marlowe, part of the School Of Night, an emperor who wants Diana as his own and Queen Elizabeth, in a way. 

This book is much more dense than the first, which I really liked. The first book, A Discovery Of Witches will always be my forever favourite book because I love how Diana and Matthew fall in love but Shadow Of Night has a lot of historical aspects to it. I think 3 or 4 short chapters are set in present day with Ysabeau, or one of the other de Clairmonts/Bishops but apart from that, it's based solely in 1590/1591. I loved reading what my favourite characters got up to in historical England/France/Prague etc. We learn of a death of one of the main characters from the first book near the end of this book. It would have been nice to get more clarification of what happened to this character. I think we get it in book 3, if memory serves. The author to this series is a historian so the details are accurate as well, which is nice. 

There are obviously some fantastical bits thrown in with the historical facts, as our main characters are a witch and a vampire but this just added to the story in my eyes and made me want to keep reading. 

Shadow Of Night is told in first person mainly from Diana's point of view. I really enjoyed this because I'm a girl so I found it easy to step into her shoes. The present day chapters are told from 3rd person point of view.  

Who here has read this book? What did you think? 

I can't wait to reread The Book Of Life...stand by for my review of that, coming soon...

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