The World of All Souls: The Complete Guide to A Discovery of Witches, Shadow of Night, and The Book of Life (All Souls)

by Deborah Harkness

Colleen Madden (Illustrator), Claire Baldwin, Lisa Halttunen, and Jill Hough

From the author of The Black Bird Oracle comes a fully illustrated guide to the #1 New York Times bestselling All Souls series—“an irresistible . . . wonderfully imaginative grown-up fantasy” (People).

Look for the hit series “A Discovery of Witches,” now streaming on AMC+, Sundance Now, and Shudder!

A world of witches, vampires, and daemons.
A manuscript that holds the secrets of their past and the key to their future.
Diana and Matthew—the forbidden love at the heart of the adventure.

In The World of All Souls, Deborah Harkness shares the rich sources of inspiration behind her bewitching novels. She draws together synopses, character bios, maps, recipes, and even the science behind creatures, magic, and alchemy—all with her signature historian's touch. Bursting with fascinating facts and dazzling artwork, this essential handbook is a must-have for longtime fans and eager newcomers alike.

• ISBN10: 0735220743
• ISBN13: 9780735220744
• Publish Date: 8 May 2018
• Publish Status: Active
• Publish Country: US
• Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
• Imprint: Viking
• Format: Hardcover
• Pages: 496
• Language: English
• URL: https://penguinrandomhouse.com/books/isbn/9780735220744

Reviews

[MurderByDeath]

There are some here who know I'm an unapologetic fan of this series, but fan or not, I'm generally not the type to buy the "guides" the more popular series put out because in all truth, they feel like something that's been thrown together to squeeze just that much more money out of everyone; especially completists.     But the cover of this one sucked me in at the Barnes and Noble and BN was the first bookshop stop on my Holiday of Book Buying Madness, so I caved.     Yay to caving!  It ended up being really interesting, as evidenced by the fact that it took me three weeks to read the damn thing.  Harkness et al manage to weave an awful lot of historical facts into a book about books that are about vampires, witches and demons.  This is the place where Harkness gets to share all her historical knowledge, research and education that went into giving Matthew and Diana's adventures verisimilitude, as well as brilliantly weaving the lives of the vampires (and Diana to a lesser extent) into history.   She's really clever about this too; using real documents that have gone missing, or paintings done during the correct period that are of unknown subjects or known to have been destroyed over time, she's able to plausibly weave fact and fiction together without an abundance of anachronisms.  Little asides throughout the book in her own voice shares with the reader her inspirations for locations, homes, castles, even tea shops.   I had no problem seeing the delineation between the factual and the fictional, but in the section where the characters are outlined, a symbol is next to each name that does exist in the historical records, a touch I appreciated since Elizabethan history is something I'm hazy about, at best.   There are beautiful illustrations throughout, a couple of out-takes from two of the books, and a few full color illustrations from - I think - alchemical texts.  This was, in fact, my only complaint about the book - the full color inserts were not captioned - an odd oversight where everything else is clearly foot-noted and cited or explained within the narrative.  At one point Harkness' own historical research was used as a citation, leading me to believe the authors' were determined to be as clear and accurate as possible.  Perhaps this means the color inserts were the work of the illustrator for the book, and not historical, but it would be nice to know either way.   A fun and very informative read for those that enjoyed the trilogy; not sure how well it would work for those that didn't read it as it might be annoying to have fictional characters you know nothing about, or care nothing for, interwoven through all the historical goodies.