Review by taliatalksbooks - The Book of Life

taliatalksbooks 's review for:

The Book of Life by Deborah Harkness

2.5

challenging mysterious tense slow-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Complicated

Loveable characters: No

Diverse cast of characters: N/A

Flaws of characters a main focus: N/A

The Book of Life by Deborah Harkness was about as good as I expected this series to end after struggling through the first two books of the trilogy. I can respect what people like about this book and this series overall, but it just wasn’t for me. Something about each of the dialog scenes was so boring I felt like I was reading a textbook rather than a fantasy story. The dialog was dry, and felt extremely dated and formal. Not only that, but the characters were about as interesting as the dialog itself, meaning hardly at all. There were so many moving parts across three long novels with so many characters that I just couldn’t tell apart. They didn’t have unique voices since most of the characters felt very one note. Some of the characters had similar names, or they had so many names I couldn’t keep track of them. I gave up sometime during book 2 trying to keep the vampire linkage straight and just tried to enjoy the plot of the book, even if the amount of characters kept increasing with little to no further development. The underlying plots were interesting but given that the second book ended with one of my least favorite tropes to ever exist, book three didn’t start off on a high note. I think these books could have done with a lot less dialog and a lot more action, since they felt a lot like tell instead of show. I felt like the events were predictable, and that Diana was fairly overpowered (not just a powerful witch, but something above that). I did like Diana’s character development, but it was also hard to gage because I had a hard time with the supporting characters. There were just SO many characters, and most of them were wholeheartedly unnecessary in my opinion. That being said, if you’re a fan of wordy fantasy with a variety of other genres woven in (romance, historical fiction, period drama, etc.) this series might be more up your alley, but for me, it just didn’t live up to the recommendations I received for it.

Content Warnings