First up it's not fantasy, it's a romance novel. The magic, vampirey and time-travel bits are thrown in haphazardly and in a way that destroys any credibility of a well-thought out world. We follow a young witch as she discovers her powers and then throws her future away on a sick relationship with a rich controlling asshole who happens to be a vampire. If that sounds like the twilight series to you, it should.
We start with Diana, smart intelligent researcher, world-renowned expert, and modern woman. By her own account she has a very healthy respect for how dangerous vampires are, but within a few pages she's jumping in the car of an incredibly powerful one. They head out to a yoga session for vamps, daemons, and witches at this guy's house, at which point I realised this was actually a romance novel.
Dozens of daemons, vampires, and witches dipped and swooped their bodies into graceful, upward curves.Ugh. From here on in, it's just Matthew showing off ridiculously expensive wine/real-estate/antiques/art and Diana ignoring all the relationship red flags anyone should ever need. I thought she was supposed to be a strong-spirited intelligent modern woman.
“This is Château Margaux from a very great vintage. Some people consider it the finest red wine ever made.”She hands over her blood sample and he proceeds to dictate everything about her life, including who she can talk to, and then starts physically assaulting her.
“Let me go, Matthew.” I struggled in his arms. “No.” No man had ever refused when I asked him to stop doing something—whether it was blowing his nose in the library or trying to slip a hand up my shirt after a movie. I struggled again. Matthew’s arms got tighter. “Stop fighting me.” He sounded amused. “You’ll get tired long before I do, I assure you.”Miriam sees the same thing:
“She told me I needed to learn how to take care of myself and stop relying on you to protect me. She basically accused me of playing the damsel in distress.”That was your intervention Diana, I feel sad that you couldn't see it. Oh well, back to Matthew dictating everything about your life and you being passive:
“You’ll stay at Woodstock until Peter Knox leaves Oxford.” My face must have betrayed my dismay. “It won’t be so bad,” he said gently. “You’ll have all the yoga you want.” With Matthew in bodyguard mode, I didn’t have much choice.
“This family is not a democracy, especially not at a time like this. When I tell you to do something, you do it, without hesitation or question. Understood?”
“Do you understand why you must not question Matthew when he tells you to do something?”I mean, you're an expert horse rider, but sure, let him treat you like a baby:
“I can get onto a horse myself,” I said hotly. “But you don’t need to.” Matthew’s hands cupped my shin, lifting me effortlessly into the saddle.
It makes me sick to think that all the people giving this 5 stars on amazon apparently might actually admire this kind of relationship with Mr. patronizing wine-list:
“You’re tired,” he said, “and hungry. Maybe we should wait until after lunch.”Surprise! Time for some time-travel, don't bother asking when/where you're going though, your husband can decide all that for you:
I still knew nothing, except that I was headed to a time before 1976 and a place where Matthew had played chess.Spoiler from the next book: Matthew had no idea what he was doing when he picked the time and place.
There's just barely enough interesting stuff happening in amongst the cringeworthy relationship bits and girlfriend-meeting-the-family boring drama, the woke-up-and-went-out-for-breakfast bits, then-I-went-rowing bits, and then-we-had-dinner bits to make me want to read the next book to see if there's more interesting fantasy world stuff happening in the new time period.
But really I don't have a good reason to read the next one, this was terrible, maybe I just like writing negative reviews.
1 star.
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