Clare L. Deming

I have been a fan of Deborah Harkness’ All Souls series, and recently finished watching the TV show based on her work. So of course I had to pick up her newest installment in the series, The Black Bird Oracle (paid links).

You can find links to each book as well as my reviews here:

• A Discovery of Witches (book here; I didn’t write a review for this one)
• Shadow of Night (book here; review here)
• The Book of Life (book here; review here)
• Time’s Convert (book here; review here)

Here is the blurb:

Deborah Harkness first introduced the world to Diana Bishop, an Oxford scholar and witch, and vampire geneticist Matthew de Clermont in A Discovery of Witches. Drawn to each other despite long-standing taboos, these two otherworldly beings found themselves at the center of a battle for a lost, enchanted manuscript known as Ashmole 782. Since then, they have fallen in love, traveled to Elizabethan England, dissolved the Covenant between the three species, and awoken the dark powers within Diana’s family line.

Now, Diana and Matthew receive a formal demand from the Congregation: They must test the magic of their seven-year-old twins, Pip and Rebecca. Concerned with their safety and desperate to avoid the same fate that led her parents to spellbind her, Diana decides to forge a different path for her family’s future and answers a message from a great-aunt she never knew existed, Gwyneth Proctor, whose invitation simply reads: It’s time you came home, Diana.

On the hallowed ground of Ravenswood, the Proctor family home, and under the tutelage of Gwyneth, a talented witch grounded in higher magic, a new era begins for Diana: a confrontation with her family’s dark past and a reckoning for her own desire for even greater power—if she can let go, finally, of her fear of wielding it.

In this stunning new novel, grand in scope, Deborah Harkness deepens the beloved world of All Souls with powerful new magic and long-hidden secrets, and the path Diana finds at Ravenswood leads to the most consequential moments yet in this cherished series.

This book picks up in the aftermath of the previous books, so it would not make sense for someone unfamiliar with the series to start with this one. The opening scenes were promising when Diana receives a mysterious message from a previously unknown great-aunt. However, this book unfortunately failed to deliver on this strange message and other threats against Diana and Matthew’s family.

This novel suffered from a constant lack of conflict and danger. Diana’s relatives turn out to welcome her and her family as they invite her to learn the new power of higher magic. When Diana is challenged by a witch in the local coven, I hoped that something interesting would result. Yet the challenge ends when the other witch just gives up and walks away – WTH?

The Congregation has announced that they intend to test Diana and Matthew’s children for an affinity for higher magic. This threat looms over the entire story, but in the end I found myself wondering why they were even that worried. This is apparently a standard test that the Congregation does for all children suspected to be so gifted. When it actually happens, it turns out to be a non-event.

I felt like the purpose of this entire book was to set up another larger story arc. However, this made The Black Bird Oracle drag to the point where I found myself not caring about what happened in this novel. I’m sad that this book was such a disappointment and I don’t think I’ll be as eager to read more in this series.

This was the first book in this series where I listened to the audiobook edition. Jennifer Ikeda was the narrator and did a good job echoing Diana from the TV series. It took me a little time to adjust to how she voiced Matthew.

Have you read The Black Bird Oracle? Do you agree with my review or disagree? Let’s chat in the comments!

You can find more of my reviews here.