Shadow of Night

This is the sequel to "A Discovery of Witches" which I read a while ago (but haven't written up anywhere). It took me a little while to get back into this world & story. The basic premise is that creatures live among us - witches, vampires & daemons. Witches are magic workers, as you'd expect, and it breeds true in families. Vampires drink blood, are immortal and must be made by another vampire, but the rest of the legends (like inability to walk in daylight) aren't true. Daemons appear to be more complicated (can be born to human families, even), and are very creative & erratic - in this book Christopher Marlowe is a daemon. The creatures are ruled over by the Congregation, with rules about fraternisation between creature types and rules intended to keep them secret from ordinary humans.

The plot is about Diana Bishop (a witch & historian) and Matthew Clairmont (a vampire), a mysterious book and the origins of creatures. The first book was the two of them meeting, falling in love, marrying, finding the book & figuring out there was something big going on. In this book they've travelled back into the past so that Diana can learn how to use her powers away from the dangers in the present. They go back to 1590 and slot into Matthew's life at that time, but obviously it's not all plain sailing. First Diana has to learn to fit in with Elizabethan life, and then they get caught up in bits of the politics (both human and creature) of the day. There was some handwave about how present-day-Matthew's arrival in the past meant that past-Matthew vanished for the duration (and presumably will be back once they've left), which just serves to leave me wondering if he'd have a hole in his memory afterwards? Or memories from the wrong Matthew? Or of the things he would've done if not displaced? Paradox is one of the things that's a thread running through this book - each section of the story ends with a chapter set back in the present day as little ripples run up through time. Finding miniatures Hilliard painted of the two of them, finding a day book Diana wrote etc. And it's clear by the end of the book that they'd always gone back to 1590 and lived there for months, but it's also clear that this isn't the way it was when the book started ... probably.

Click the link below for my full review.