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Guys, I must tell you about this book I'm reading. (Okay, listening to, as I bought the audiobook, but it's the same thing.) It's A Discovery of Witches by Deborah Harkness, and you know what I love most about it? The author assumes the reader is very smart and will keep up. Do you know how rare that is, especially in paranormal fantasy?
It's set in a version of our world, but one that has witches, vampires and daemons. So far so cliche, right? Except not. Though the names are the same not much follows the traditional myths, yet there's a logical explanation for this right there in the story. It's not spoon-fed to the reader; you have to figure it out after one character partially explains it. But it's there and it's not sparkly-vampires-are-sparkly, either.
( Putting the rest behind a cut for the spoiler-phobic, though I'm only about a third of the way in, so no huge spoilers are possible. )
I won't have a critical opinion of the novel until I reach the end, but for now my only negative point is specific to the audiobook: if one is going to narrate a novel set in Oxford, one should learn how to pronounce the names of the colleges! An American accent is no excuse for mispronouncing Magdalen.
Anyhow, that's my book rec.
It's set in a version of our world, but one that has witches, vampires and daemons. So far so cliche, right? Except not. Though the names are the same not much follows the traditional myths, yet there's a logical explanation for this right there in the story. It's not spoon-fed to the reader; you have to figure it out after one character partially explains it. But it's there and it's not sparkly-vampires-are-sparkly, either.
( Putting the rest behind a cut for the spoiler-phobic, though I'm only about a third of the way in, so no huge spoilers are possible. )
I won't have a critical opinion of the novel until I reach the end, but for now my only negative point is specific to the audiobook: if one is going to narrate a novel set in Oxford, one should learn how to pronounce the names of the colleges! An American accent is no excuse for mispronouncing Magdalen.
Anyhow, that's my book rec.
