The Magician's Land

     The Magician's Land, by Lev Grossman, is the third and final part of the Magician's trilogy. By the time that I started to read this trilogy, the first two were already out. I quite enjoyed the wait, and having a book to look forward to. Magician's land continues the story of Quentin Coldwater, Brakebills school, underground magic, and the land of Fillory. I found that it brought a satisfying conclusion, although throughout the book I thought that the readers would be left hanging.
     In the previous book, Quentin was banished from the land of Fillory which had been his home for many years. After a short-lived stent teaching a Brakebills, his old school of magic, Quentin, joins up with some underground magician thieves. Through a series of events unknowingly started in world war two, and recorded in Quentin's favourite childhood books (Narnia reference), Quentin is challenged with the task of saving a failing Fillory.
     While I enjoyed the first book in this series the most, this is definitely second. I found that there were a lot of new characters, but in the end, the old favourites were still the key characters. I was concerned for the first part of this book, not for the characters, but for the plot. Somehow it all worked, but the ragtag group of magical thieves seemed like a very different book than I was expecting. Lev Grossman managed to make it all make sense, and looking back on the book, it all works.

Shadow of Night

      Shadow of Night by Deborah Harkness is past two of the All Souls Trilogy (part one being The Discovery of Witches. While this book is clearly in the middle of a larger storyline, it clearly takes on different issues than the previous book.
      This series is based around the search for a book, and the three missing pages from it. A very important, enchanted, book which contains currently unknown information about the genesis of the supernatural beings: witches, demons, and vampires.
      Shadow of Night continues to follow the story of Diana Bishop, a witch just discovering her powers, and her partner/husband/ significant other, the vampire Mathew Clairmont. Unlike the previous book, this one is set in Elizabethan England. Yes, this does make sense in the book. While the last book took place in what can be thought of as Diana Bishop's home turf, this one is clearly in Mathew Clairmont's.
     As a vampire, Mathew already lived through this era. In fact, some of his friends are major and minor characters. They are able to spend some time with his "father" who died during The Second World War. Diana is able to work on Alchemy (which she studies and teaches in modern times) with a famous female alchemist (who I hadn't heard of, but seems to have been quite important). Being in the different time period give Diana a chance to find someone to teacher her how to use her developing powers.
     The discovery of Diana's powers. Diana has always known that she is a witch. Her family have always been witches. However, Diana stopped using her witchcraft (in which she was not proficient in the first place), as a child or teenager, shortly after her parents died. She and Mathew are now under scrutiny, and in physical danger because of their relationship. Thus, they must travel back in time (using her newly discovered genetic time-walking power) to a time when they are not being hunted. Unfortunately, some unpleasant parts of Mathew's past are now in the present, and by the end they are forced to return to the tremulous present day.