The Black Bird Oracle

All Souls #5

By Deborah Harkness

ISBN 9780593724774

Author’s website:  deborahharkness.com

Brought to you by OBS reviewer Omar

Summary

Diana Bishop journeys to the darkest places within herself—and her family history—in the highly anticipated fifth novel of the beloved #1 New York Times bestselling All Souls series.

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.

Review

Diana Bishop and Matthew D Clairmont are back. The Black Bird Oracle takes place some years after the events of Time’s Convert, the twins are about to be seven years old and the summer is just starting. The goddess still has plans for Diana, and the other creatures of the world still want something from her.

I liked The Black Bird Oracle. We continue the story of Diana and Matthew, their lives, learning about their pasts and what their children might be. Just from the summary we know that we will get to meet the Proctors, Diana’s father’s family, which we haven’t heard from in the previous books. I liked this portion of the book, learning more about all of Diana’s family, how they interlock and their history. We knew that the Bishops and the Proctors were victims of the Salem Witch trials, but now we learn more of how their descendants continue their lives and all trickle down to make Diana.

While we saw Diana learn magic and about being a weaver in the previous books, this time I feel that magic was more present day-to-day in the story. The Proctors help Diana to embrace being a witch, something that Sarah Bishop never got to do. In general, magic feels more magical.

Pip and Rebecca have more screen time in this story. The twins get to spend the summer with the Proctors, and they get to be freer than they have ever been. We also meet the Proctors: Aunt Gwyneth, who was Diana’s grandfather’s sister, Cousin Julie, Cousin Iker, Grandpa Tally, and Granny Drocas who died during the witch trials. But there were a lot of Proctors (some of them with a different last name but still family) all waiting for Diana and her family with open arms. I liked how the Salem Witch trials history is blended into the Black Bird Oracle and the characters in this book.

Higher Magic is the other side of the craft and Diana and Matthew get a master class from the Proctors. We knew that Diana had an affinity with Higher Magic, but Sarah always steered her away from it. Now she needs to learn because Pip and Rebecca might also have that affinity.  This side of the magic opens the reader to a new side of the world of All Souls series, we understand more about ghosts, memory magic, and the balance between Light, Darkness, and Shadow magic.

I loved the interaction between Matthew and the Proctor family. At first, he is reserved, he doesn’t like change or anything that might threaten his family, but the Proctors open their arms to Matthew and embrace him.  From the younger ones to the oldest family members, all love Matthew. The best scenes are the grilling and Matthew getting coffee for them.

This book answers some questions from Diana’s early childhood and Stephen and Rebecca’s marriage life. It also reveals the history between Phillip de Clairmont and the Proctors, and hidden secrets from the Bishop’s that might break Diana.

With the way the book ends, I hope we get another book in this series that solves even more questions that came up, the resurgence of old enemies and new characters that threaten Diana’s family.

If you are a fan of the All Souls series or A Discovery of Witches show, then I recommend, The Black Bird Oracle.  It’s time for Diana Bishop to return home.