2 Bloggers 1 Series - The Black Bird Oracle (All Souls #5)

 

I knew when I heard this was being released, Stormi and I would end up buddy reading it as soon as possible.  We both really enjoyed the series when we read it (although I know for a fact she enjoyed it more) and we both had pretty much given up hope the author would ever continue.  But thankfully, she did and based on the ending in this one, I would predict she isn't done yet.  So read on for my thoughts and then hop over to Stormi's at Storm Reads for hers.

TITLE: The Black Bird Oracle (All Souls #5)

AUTHOR: Deborah Harkness

PUBLISHER: Ballatine Books

PUBLISHING DATE: July 16, 2024

PAGES: 464   

SOURCE: Library

FROM GOODREADS: Deborah Harkness first introduced the world to Diana Bishop, Oxford scholar and witch, and vampire geneticist Matthew de Clairmont 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.

MY THOUGHTS: This book picks up with Matthew and Diana's twins being seven years old.  It had been so long since I read the last book, that it took me about 75-100 pages to figure out what I had forgotten. The twins, Pip and Rebecca, are starting to come into their own magic and The Congregation wants to have them tested to see just how powerful they are.  Diana and Matthew both know The Congregation does not have the children's best interest in mind and are really wanting to learn how they can best use the children to serve them going forward.  One afternoon, Diana and Rebecca receive a mysterious visit by a black bird which leads Diana off to Ravenswood, her father's childhood legacy.  She hopes to find something that will help, and her Matthew protect the children, however, what she finds is her darker side of magic - a side she has refused to use up until now and a side which she does not understand.  Can she learn all about it, stay alive, protect her children and keep her marriage intact?  

There was a lot to grasp in this book.  The reader is introduced to a whole new set of characters from Diana's family as well as some rival witches who also live nearby.  The children are adorable (for children) and I especially love Diana's dog and Pip's familiar, who is a griffin but is usually masked as a dog as well.  I don't feel like the reader sees much of Matthew in this book and he doesn't really have his own plot, but rather his actions are done to prop up Diana and assist her in uncovering her new magical strengths.  I will say that while the plot is interesting, the whole book really sets the scene for what is to come.  I did enjoy the few magical battles the reader witnesses but all along, I keep feeling an undertone that what the author was doing was creating a wedge between Matthew and Diana we have not seen the end of.

Overall, this was a solid read.  I would say it's more accurately a 3.75 but will round up for the sake of Goodreads and making things easier.  I hope we don't have to wait too long for the next installment though because I finally feel like I once again have a decent grasp on the All Souls world.  One parting thing though, I NEED GALLOWGLASS!  Please Harkness, give him a book of his own.

MY RATING: 4 PAWS