Having once been a must-read-the-books-before-watching-the-show purist, I’ve come full circle, watching A Discovery of Witches before I even knew there was a book of the same name to read.
Clearly I’d missed the cultural zeitgeist memo, with Deborah Harkness’ All Souls trilogy, of which A Discovery of Witches is the first instalment, being popular enough to warrant being picked up for TV.
But with the first A Discovery of Witches season just eight—albeit excellent—episodes long, and a second season only commissioned after the first series went gangbusters and therefore not yet even shooting, there’s frustratingly too little televisual offerings of the tale available.
Which is why I am, frankly, grateful for the books. Or, rather, even more so than usual.
How close is it to the book? I wondered while watching the show. And what happens after the cliffhanger Season 1 left us on?
The short answer is: very close, with the TV show staying incredibly true to the book save for some (I would argue necessary) tightening up of a few plot points to keep the story moving swiftly. The other short answer is: I’m just about to find out. I’m waiting for the second book to arrive, so will be able to report back just as soon as I have it in my hands.
For those uninitiated with A Discovery of Witches—as I was just a few weeks ago—the book introduces us to the complex crossover of the lives and politics of witches, vampires, and daemons. Protagonist Diana Bishop is an orphaned witch turned academic of alchemy who doesn’t operate as a witch.
When she unknowingly calls up a long-lost book from the Oxford library stacks—a book that is rumoured to contain answers about the three creatures’ beginnings and potentially endings—she attracts the interest and the ire of witches, vampires, and daemons alike.
In particular, she attracts the attention of vampire Matthew De Clairmont, with an attraction between the two of them crossing the traditional bounds of vampire–witch relationships. Cue much tension between the different species surrounding them and the elusive manuscript. Also much banter between all three.
A perk of coming to the series so late is that all three books in the trilogy are already available. Which means the only thing getting between me devouring the tale is the fact that I’m waiting for Books 2 and 3 to arrive in the mail.
Boomerang Books has notified me that the books have shipped and I’m eking out the final pages of Book 1 while I wait. Suffice to say I’ll be shaking down the postie every time they so much as look in my mailbox’s direction …