A review by mdpenguin
Shadow of Night by Deborah Harkness

Did not finish book. Stopped at 0%.

I gave it five chapters before deciding that I couldn't deal with it anymore. Every single thing relies on everyone being a complete fool. Diana is a bungling ignoramus with zero self-confidence. Matthew is even more controlling. Also, nearly every member of the School of Night who actually has lines to speak in the story is obnoxious. We're to accept that Matthew was Matthew Roydon, about whom very little is supposed to be known, even though he was a noted poet and has a fairly well fleshed out Wikipedia article about him. And the whole idea of going back to Elizabethan England was freakin' stupid to begin with for the exact reasons that come to play very early in the book. I have no idea what story Harkness wants to tell with this setting and these characters, but it's not the one that I was hoping for. The whole thing is just too tedious for me to continue.