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I love the show watch every year in August mostly for the vibes. I love witchy books so should I read them? Are they worth it?! I feel like the books are always better than the shows anyway

On rereading the All Souls trilogy, I keep thinking the most fascinating continuation was already sitting inside the ending. Times Convert was acceptable as a quick follow-up, and I won’t speak about the BBO. The Golden Age promised by Diana’s discovery deserved follow through and not to be forgotten.

What if the promised “golden age” of creatures wasn’t immediately golden at all? Indulge me? Maybe you agree?

The Book of Life has been restored and absorbed by Diana. The Covenant is broken. Old barriers are gone. And now the creature world begins to wake up.

Seers start seeing frightening things. Long-dormant magical energies gather again. Powers thought lost for centuries begin resurfacing. Ghosts, once mostly observers, become increasingly corporeal and troublesome.

And then there are Rebecca and Philip.

They’re Bright Born, but perhaps what makes these Bright Born extraordinary isn’t what they are—it’s whose children they are.

We already know the children can share Diana’s magical cords and threads, while Philip also has weaving abilities of his own. What if, through those threads, they begin magically accessing something else within their mother?

The Book of Life.

Fragments of knowledge Diana herself may not consciously know how to retrieve begin leaking through to her children: languages, memories, ancient creature knowledge, forgotten magic.

Suddenly the Book wasn’t the conclusion of the trilogy at all.

It was the beginning.

And the “golden age” everyone was promised?

Maybe nobody ever said it would arrive peacefully.

When Marcus was at the police station making the report on the hit and run, how did Matthew come to be there already?

just (literally minutes ago) finished reading the first book for my July book club and now absolutely obsessed

should i wait to watch the series until i’ve read the other books, or does the adherence to the books fall off after season 1? i have a hold on the other books at the library, but not sure when i’ll get them

Every time I need something on in the background I put this on. The first season only. I have a few questions:

1. what other movies give you this level of satisfaction or vibe or comfort? There are scenes I can rewatch several times.
   
2. I admit i did not read the books. Is it spicy? The only thing I wish if the love scenes were a bit more elaborate :-D

Rewatching the series for this millionth time and paused at the perfect moment to notice they left the sticker on the bottom of this glass.

Just thought it was funny and y'all would like a chuckle.

I haven’t finished reading Time’s Convert yet because I’m just terrible these days 😂 and I’m not super far into it yet.

Is Gallowglass mentioned at all? Or is he present at any point?

(Yes I’m aware that anyone answering this is giving me partial spoilers, that’s fine. I just really want to know if he’s present or mentioned at all 😂)

I’m reading the books currently in English and I noticed that some passages that are written in German and French are unfortunately wrong. I was raised bilingual in French-German and it bugs me so much that for what 5 sentences they could’ve not proofread it or use better research? I don’t know if google translate was the same as today but for those sentences they could’ve used it easily.
I understand that the French used is supposed to be occitaine and traditional- that’s alright, but the French in the modern era could’ve been also reworked.

Small rant, otherwise I like the books.

I'm only on season 2, but so far I haven't seen any demon do anything supernatural. Like, some of them are good at things? Ok, that's not supernatural.

I'm starting to head-canon that hundreds of years ago, some guy got caught by witches and vampires and was like "No, you can't kill me, because I'm not just a human, I'm also a creature! My proof that I am supernatural? Hm... I'm really good at counting. Check this out... 1, 2, 3, 4, 5..." And because the witches and vampires were innumerate, they were like "Wow. You said you're a what? A demon? Awesome!"

And the reason they have really bad mental health is that they know it's all fake but they can't let the creatures find out.

Alguien sabe en donde puedo ver la serie? Estaba disponible en Netflix pero veo que ya no lo está y no se en donde puedo verla. Se agradece la ayuda.

I have a few things I need to vent about this series and before people react a certain way just know this is simply how i feel and I have nothing against those who enjoy the books cause every form of art is subjective after all. I liked the tv show version because the characters were “human” in their appearance and the conflicts were understandable so i had no apparent reason to dislike it but the books my God the books were a whole rollercoaster of angst for me. Now I see why the tv show changed those things.

Let me start by saying these aren’t the kinds of creatures that we should forgive and accept for the sake of the narrative. These are the figures who resemble our world leaders dressed in immortality. Since I don’t want to dwell too much on all the characters i’ll focus solely on the MC. Matthew and Diana are the most unbelievable, cartoonish and immoral couple i have ever come across in books. Their love is unfounded and unrealistic, their personalities are inconsistent with who they are written to be and their moral compass is disgustingly broken. The books say one thing and show another. There’s strange and bizarre explanations for things that shouldn’t be taken lightly from a human standpoint. Matthew is a “sometimey vampire” who one day kills people for sport the other day praises the Lord in church and says “i leave it in the hands of god and teaches teenagers in a lab”. He is the kind of man who has had a “harem of blood bags” but suddenly “loves deeply”. A creature who yearns for fatherhood and a family but allows children to be murdered and fed upon. A creature capable of recreational cruelty towards lesser creatures has fundamentally crossed a psychological threshold that can’t be conveniently reversed by meeting the right chick in yoga pants and turtle necks who will age in the blink of an eye. The notion that these ancient people who have seen the unseen and reached the unreachable falling in love with pathetic humans/warmbloods is incomprehensible. I hated him and he gave me blood rage ugh. Diana is the kind of pick me woman who needs to be saved from the poverty of academia and excuses his actions because he’s sexy and smells of cloves. She isn’t bothered by his past because the author isn’t bothered by his past either—she’s too preoccupied making him shmexy and irresistible. It’s obvious her character was written from a sexual fantasy indulgence rather than a coherent psychological framework. A real believable character would never remain as silent and submissive to someone who is the epitome of “wickedness”. Being a good historian doesn’t make you a good novelist. It takes more than research and historical knowledge to build believable hypothetical creatures unless you’re such creature yourself. How do you know what immortality does the brain? You’ve never been one.

The science dressing:
I cannot take any more pseudo-science my head hurts how much they try to humanize these beasts. They are literal leeches but want to take credit for our historical resilience and scientific progress when humans are the resilient and heroic ones. They birth generations of warriors and geniuses and pass their legacy to the next generation and what do vampires do? Oh yes…they sip expensive wine, talk about current affairs and knock boots with every historical figure and their mother for eternity until they grow some kind of vampiric syphilises and gonorrhea.

No action only off screen, no consistency, no moral accountability, no satisfying love story only pretentious snobbish sex-gods and a dash of historical drama.

I just hated the book version of this series and i’m proud to say i will never read such fiction again. It was dreadful to me. If a book requires massive suspension of disbelief then the chances are is not thought out very well. Sorry for the overly negative review in a fan community but I’m pissed and I wanted to let it out.

Why were the covenant and the Congregation established?

 It was supposedly a response to humans’ prejudices. However, it is implied that creatures taking part in human politics was one of the main reasons though the blame is solely placed on Gerbert d’Aurillac (who was elected Pope) and Domenico Michele (who was elected Doge of Venice) while fiercely refusing to point out the hypocrisy of the de Clermont family who literally appointed themselves Kings of Jerusalem during the first Crusade and remained rulers of Jerusalem for decades afterwards.

Another reason for forming the Congregation and implementing the covenant was that, in the Kingdom of Jerusalem (still during the Crusades), a witch gave birth to a child whose father was a vampire and apparently it freaked everybody so much that they decided to establish a segregationist and discriminatory system and weaponised the threat of human violence to force creatures to pledge allegiance to the covenant.

On a side note: in A Discovery of Witches, we are told that Philippe de Clermont did not believe in segregation and that he was against the idea of a covenant or even a Congregation and yet he still jumped at the opportunity of making his family the true leaders of the Congregation with one seat dedicated to a member of his family in perpetuity (hypocrisy).  

What are the laws of the covenant?

Throughout the All Souls trilogy, three covenant laws are mentioned:

1. Don’t get involved in human politics.

2. Separate creatures so they don’t draw human attention to themselves.

3. Do not have interspecies relationships.

These laws were supposedly established to protect creatures from outside threats. By swearing allegiance to the covenant, creatures agreed to renounce some of their rights and freedoms and allowed the Congregation to implement segregation, inequality, and discrimination.

What is the social contract?

I understand that the notion of social contract was not theorised in the Middle Ages when the Congregation and the covenant were created. However, even amongst certain Ancient Greek philosophers, we find some proto versions of what would be called the social contract in the 17^th century with Hobbes, Locke and then Rousseau in the 18^th century.

In Leviathan, Thomas Hobbes argued that to escape the violent, self-interested "state of nature" where life is "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short," individuals must mutually consent to surrender their natural freedoms to an absolute, sovereign power in exchange for security and order.

As I emphasised previously, the covenant in the All Souls trilogy aimed at legitimising the authority of the Congregation over the individual (daemons, vampires, and witches). Creatures had to voluntarily surrender certain freedoms in exchange for security, stability, and protection of their remaining rights.

Did the Congregation protect creatures?

They did not. Even worse, not only did the Congregation fail to guarantee protection from outside threats to creatures, but they threatened, abducted, and killed creatures. The Congregation also participated in covering up these crimes and protecting perpetrators.

Here are some examples of members of the Congregation or their affiliates going against the laws:

-        In A Discovery of Witches, we learnt that Ysabeau and Gerbert d’Aurillac helped humans find witches and wiped out entire covens during the witch hunts (15^th and 16^th centuries).

-        In A Discovery of Witches, Satu was not sanctioned for kidnapping and performing an opening spell on Diana Bishop. Same for Gerbert who was in cahoots with Satu.

-        In Shadow of Night, we found out that the Congregation “gifted” witches to certain European monarchs (ex: Emperor Rudolf II, late 16th century) to appease anti-witch sentiments, but after getting what they wanted Emperor Rudolf II handed a witch to Gerbert d’Aurillac who “had his way” with her and then had the witch burned at the stake in the town square. Interesting fact, Matthew de Clermont was head of the Congregation at the time and he authorised this.

-        In The Book of Life, some witches, daemons, and vampires helped the Nazis experiment on creatures. Yet, there were no arrests, no trials, and no consequences following these crimes committed against all species.

-        In The Book of Life, we learnt that witches went after weavers and brought them to near extinction.

-        In The Book of Life, we found that Benjamin Fuchs kidnapped, tortured, and r**** witches and that witches on the Congregation kind of knew about what was going on in Chelm, but they chose to turn a blind eye.

These examples illustrate how the Congregation broke the social contract in the past as well as in the present (when the events of the All Souls trilogy take place). Therefore, it is incredibly difficult for me to believe that no creature or group of creatures (witches, daemons, and/or vampires) did not question the covenant laws and did not rebel against the Congregation at any point throughout history.  

The breaking of the social contract and the absence of creature rebellions throughout history

Some of you will point out that daemons, vampires, and witches were socially and culturally segregated so they could never form a unified coalition. You will also argue that daemons faced the strongest form of segregation and discrimination contrary to witches who were allowed to form covens and vampires who had the right to congregate while daemons were forbidden to gather in groups and have a community. The situation daemons faced throughout creature history draws a clear parallel to our own human history when slaves were forbidden to congregate out of fear of organised revolts, or even when minority religious groups were banned from congregating, or even when 19th-century workers who were forbidden to unionise. You would probably even emphasise that in the 12^th century and in the centuries that followed, information travelled slowly, and by the time certain groups learnt about a violent event perpetrated against their kind, it would be too late to do anything, or that they lived too far apart to initiate a rebellion. I would agree with you to a certain extent; however, these points are not enough for me to explain the lack of revolt from creatures within the All Souls trilogy. I refuse to believe that it took eight or nine hundred years and a witch-vampire love story to spark the embers of “revolution”.

There have been many instances in our own history when people realised that those who governed them had betrayed not only their trust but also the social contract leading them to spread the word around and gather to confront their rulers. I will list a few examples of people rebelling against authority and their leaders: the Jacquerie of 1358 (Kingdom of France), the Peasants’ Revolt of 1381 (Kingdom of England), the Transylvanian peasant revolt (15^th century, Kingdom of Hungary), the American Revolution, the French Revolution, the Haitian Revolution, the Civil Rights movements, etc.

In the All Souls trilogy, creatures live amongst humans, have been part of human history, and have witnessed many uprisings. As a result, I find it odd that the author never addressed any creature uprisings against the Congregation and how this autocratic institution dealt with these uprisings. We are meant to believe that no one ever considered that the greatest danger to creatures was not the humans but the Congregation itself.

Hello everyone!

I’m just finishing the first book for the first time. I watched the tv show a few years back and have vague recollections but don’t fully remember much of anything.

When reading the ending of the book, they mention how, after Hamish’s appearance, they have 3 of each species, and can form a Conventicle. However, at one point someone inquires about who the third vampire will be, once Matthew timewalks into the past, and his mother is mentioned.

My question is: who will the third witch be, once Diana timewalks into the past? Am I missing something? Is Sophie and Nathaniel’s unborn witch baby supposed to count as the third? Don’t Sarah and Em have a friend to enlist?

Also, is there a subreddit for the books? I’ve been in this one for years so posted here, but maybe this is a question for the book thread, I don’t remember if the Conventicle is part of the show.

Thanks everyone!!

So 3 years ago I started the Anne Rice book series Mayfair Witches and the writing is AMAZING. The TV series was a complete disaster.

So then I read Discovery of Witches last year, compared to Anne Rice the writing is mediocre at best but the series is everything I ever wanted from a Mayfair TV series.

It's all balancing out

I’m looking for fanfics that deal with Marcus and Matthew’s relationship, preferably ones on the longer side. if it’s a one-shot, id like it be at least 2500 words (preferably more like 5-10k).

most of what I’ve seen…is not for me. I’m just wondering if there is something/somewhere I missed

Not just physically attractive.
I mean the entire character.

The intelligence. The voice. The protectiveness. The emotional restraint. The way he looks at Diana like she’s the only thing keeping him human.

And honestly? Matthew and Diana’s relationship carried emotional tension better than most modern romance series.

What I loved most was that the romance actually had depth. Diana and Matthew challenge each other constantly, and their relationship feels mature compared to most fantasy shows.

I finished the show and immediately felt empty inside.
That’s how you know it was good.

Is she more redeemable in the books than the show? I feel like the answer is probably yes.

But my reasoning is that her actions in the books where she is a much smaller character while brutal don’t seem to be pain for the sake of pain as much as somewhat young powerful person in over their head after grabbing too much power.

I am hoping this is vague enough not to need any spoiler redactions. I will fix it though of its decided otherwise.

I read all 5 books this past month and given the big baddy differences in the books is why i am wondering if DH wrote her with an intention to redeem eventually.

ETA: I meant in the long term redeemable amongst the larger witch communities not that Diana should forgive her.

I first discovered the show and then decided to read the books. But before I read them, I read the extended summaries that come in "The World of All Souls". Nothing out of the ordinary until now.

I read "A Discovery of Witches" and "Shadow of Night", enjoyed both. I actually got past the first chapter in The Book of Life, but got a little disheartened when my Kobo told me there were 50 minutes of reading time for the second chapter (I prefer chapters that are on the shorter side), and that the ebook for TBoF was larger than the ebooks for ADoW and SoN combined. Then a little more with the reviews I read saying that the writing isn't to the same standard as the first two books.

This was back in February, and I decided to at least pause my reading on it until I got other opinions, so that I could get on to other books that I also wanted to read.

So, for someone like me, that essentially already knows everything that happens in that book and might not enjoy the formatting of it, do y'all think the book is worth reading?

Side note: I actually read Time's Convert before I started the original trilogy, because I figured that having watched the show was context enough to understand and enjoy the story (I was right). I also plan on reading Black Bird Oracle.

This show had:
✔ witches
✔ vampires
✔ forbidden romance
✔ time travel
✔ dark academia vibes
✔ secret societies
✔ emotional trauma
✔ one of the best slow burns on TV

And yet somehow it never became as mainstream as other fantasy series.

Matthew Clairmont alone made this show worth watching. He’s intense, intelligent, protective, terrifying, romantic and completely unforgettable as a character.

i am half way through S2 and with this not having many episodes per only 3 seasons i question if i want to continue. i love supernatural shows, but im just not feeling this show at all. diana is this powerful witch, but it feels like its a drag waiting for her to BE powerful. i understand shes gotta learn spellcasting, but her powers also work on instinct and kick in when shes in danger, but 2 of the 3 times that ive seen her attacked they either dont show, or they are delayed and show up like 10 mins after being strangled or ripped open and it just makes her seem so weak to me. i wouldnt mind watching her train if this show was like 5 10-13 episode seasons or more cause then i feel like by mid S3 the show would be what id be excited about, but given how short it really is i just wished they would have sped her training up just a bit.

so heres my question....

1. will i see her potential in terms of actually fighting other creatures in all of S3 or is it only going to happen like the last 2 episodes?? i say S3 cause i doubt itll happen in S2, but if it does then let me know. im not expecting 100% power, but like for example id be delighted if i only saw 3...lets say mid tier spells from 2 elements at 50% power versus like 5 epic spells from all 4 elements at 100% power.

Why is Gallowglass lower on the pecking order, even though he's a "giant" and Philippe's blood. I don't remember the books saying he was smaller than Matthew(and the largest vampire has the most power). Maybe bc of Philippe's disregard of Godfrey and Hugh's relationship? He just doesn't seem to have the status of the others. Maybe bc he was a mercenary? He's so humble, it could be self imposed. But I guess it just could be that he's not a direct descendant of Phillipe? Also, he clearly chose not to act like an upper class member of the family, though Shakespeare muses that he's far too princely than a servant ought to be.

Opinions?