The Black Bird Oracle
The exhilarating new All Souls novel featuring Diana Bishop and Matthew Clairmont
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4.1 • 100 Ratings
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- $15.99
Publisher Description
'Haunting in every way. A story thick with family secrets, human heartache, and the kind of deep magic only Harkness can conjure. You will be enchanted' LEIGH BARDUGO
'The Black Bird Oracle deftly explores the nexus of memory, history, and parenthood - the magic, pain, and promises mothers pass onto their children. Harkness's lush prose makes a fantastical world real enough to touch' JODI PICOULT
Diana Bishop journeys to the darkest places within herself - and her family history - in the highly anticipated fifth novel of the beloved Number One Sunday Times bestselling All Souls series.
The first shadows fall on a Friday afternoon when a single, dying raven lands on the pavement in front of Diana Bishop, harbinger of an invitation that reads, 'It's time you came home, Diana'.
Diana is a witch and scholar; her husband Matthew Clairmont, a vampire. Their intense love for one another awoke the dark powers within her and dissolved the Covenant between the three species - Witch, Daemon and Vampire - that live alongside humans. Now, the governing Congregation has decided it must test the magical powers of their seven-year-old twins, Pip and Becca. Concerned with their safety, Diana decides to forge a different path for her family's future and travels to Ravenswood, the Proctor family home.
There, Diana begins a new era, becoming her great aunt Gwyneth's pupil in higher magic. It's time to confront her family's past - and her own, inescapable desire for greater power.
Number One bestselling author Deborah Harkness returns to her beloved All Souls world with a triumphant novel that sweeps back to the Salem Panic and illuminates Diana's family history in new and thrilling ways.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
Deborah Harkness returns to the world she first mapped out in 2011’s A Discovery of Witches, the hit fantasy saga that’s since been adapted for television. In the fifth instalment in the All Souls series, star-crossed central couple Diana and Matthew must contend with formalities around their seven-year-old twins, who sit at the cusp on their magical inheritance. Yet as Diana confronts the next generation’s potential power, she gets drawn back into her family’s turbulent history via her powerful great-aunt. Longtime fans of Harkness will relish the core characters’ extended lineage, yet newcomers can just as easily come in fresh.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Bestseller Harkness carries the contemporary fantasy world of her All Souls series (after 2018's Time's Convert) into a new generation with this messy adventure. Pip and Becca, the seven-year-old hybrid vampire-witch twins of New England witch Diana Bishop and French vampire geneticist Matthew de Clermont, are due to be examined for their own eerie talents by the shadowy Congregation. Diana, fearful for them and anxious yet eager to expand her own higher-magic powers, is summoned by ravens to meet her father's relatives in Ravenswood, near Ipswich, Mass., where she and her children endure occult meetings with assorted family ghosts. She also receives magical tarot coaching from Great-Aunt Gwyneth and battles inimical local witch Meg. Matthew, previously the series' wolfish romantic lead, here subsides into a supportive househusband so that Diana, fueled by rabid curiosity and sluiced with endless tea, can pursue her supernatural vocation. There's little heat for romantasy fans to latch onto, and the payoff of the twins' testing is made to wait for future installments. Readers will wish they had an annotated family tree to understand the tangled web of Diana's relations. The result is ambitious, long-winded, and a bit of a muddle.
Customer Reviews
See AllMagical family inspiration
Story of love between couples, families and extended family and friends weaving a strong sense of magical love & belonging
Upends canon and inconsistencies annoying
I was so looking forward to this 5th instalment. I can’t properly express my disappointment without spoilers. All I will say is Sarah is unrecognisable, Diana is apparently not that powerful a witch after all and Stephen Proctor was apparently controlling and coercive? The writing is fine but what Harkness has done to beloved characters in the guise of opening up new plot arcs is hard to accept.
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Loved it, I want more 💖