Deborah Harkness has come up with new challenges for Diana Bishop and Matthew Clairmont in The Black Bird Oracle, Book Five in her best-selling All Souls series. Fans of the first four installments will absolutely enjoy this one, but it is definitely an installment and not a stand alone in a series. New readers need to be encouraged to go back and start with the first installment, A Discovery of Witches, because there is a LOT of world building that you’re kind of expected to already know.
The interesting thing to me is that I viewed the first three as a complete trilogy, and the fourth as an interesting addition that centered on beloved side characters from the first three. This fifth installment, though… It takes an already well-established world and story and manages to turn everything on its head just by playing with things like unreliable narrators and memories, both past and present. The history of witches in America and how Diana’s family is tied in adds an unexpected depth and poignancy.
I really don’t want to go into anymore detail about what actually happens in case you are planning to read it yourself, but I do feel the need to make a couple of non-spoilers comments about pacing. It starts with a great sense of urgency, but then the middle 50% reads like an idyllic extended summer vacation with a vague sense of doom hanging over it. Then you realize you’re at 80% complete and haven’t even started any sort of real road to conclusion, and that you’re going to be left on a bit of a cliff hanger because there is no way that all of the loose ends can be tied up that quickly.
Would I recommend The Black Bird Oracle? Absolutely. Harkness does an amazing job of making you re-think everything you think you know about this world and setting you up for the next book. Do I wish it wasn’t a cliff hanger? Also, yes. I’m not a huge fan, but this is done really well.
I read it on Amazon Kindle – 4 of 5 stars.
