The next morning, Diana goes for a run.  On her way back in her building, the doorman stops her and says that she had a visitor the previous night, but he couldn’t let her in because of the campus policy.  It was an Australian woman.  Diana shrugs it off and goes up to her apartment so she can look in the mirror and describe her appearance to us, because clearly this book has its priorities in order, yes?

After we finish with the great What to Wear Debate, she goes back to the library, because apparently it never occurred to this woman that there might be some parts of her research she could do elsewhere, and maybe right now would be a good time to do those parts.  Nope, instead she’s going to go straight back to where all the creatures are waiting for her, then whine to us about all the creatures that are waiting for her. 

Today, Matthew is by the entrance so he can spy on her coming and going, and he has a woman with him.

Her eyes were amber and black, and as cold as frostbite.

I’m not sure about the rest of you, but I’ve never been able to tell the temperature of eyes by looking at them. 

I know it’s a metaphor, but I can’t ever figure out what it’s a metaphor for.  How does one have ‘cold’ eyes?  Dull I can understand.  Sparkling.  Bright.  Dim.  Alert.  Sleepy.  All these things have to do with a presence or lack of focus that can make a person appear more or less grounded/interested in the present moment.  An expression could be cold, but how the hell are eyes cold?  I see it all the time, and I can’t for the life of me actually picture it.

And what does ‘amber and black’ mean?  One is amber, the other is solid black?  Or she has black pupils, much like every other person ever?  Or are her irises somehow a mix of amber and black?

For a book with so many words devoted to description, it rather sucks at describing things. 

This new woman is Miriam and she’s also a vampire.  She somehow just radiates vampire-ness and this shows when she does such intimidating things as ‘stand there silently’ and ‘walk a single step before stopping.’

In fact, while Diana and Matthew trade weak banter, Miriam is continually described in hostile terms, while also being over-dramatically hostile toward Diana.  I think we’ve found our Mean Girl rival for the evening.  I wish that we could just once get some actual subtlety to our Mean Girls, rather than have the text rub their meanness in our faces as they do such things as ‘say hello’ and ‘shake hands.’

“We’ve got you in A4 today, Dr. Bishop,” he [Johnson] said with a pleased puff of his cheeks. “I’ll just carry these back for you.” Clairmont’s shoulders were so broad that I couldn’t see around him

Uhg, there is not a limit to the number of paragraphs you can have.  Stop putting text about one person on the same line as dialogue from a completely different person.

There’s this sense, at first, that the book is…if not well written, then at least intelligently.  It’s got the million-dollar word choice and the occasional convoluted sentence structure and tons of flowery phrases shoved in, so at first glance it comes off as very academic.  But once you get used to the cadence of it all, there’s a surprising amount of very basic mistakes that just jump off the page. 

Diana isn’t forced to endure the indignity of sharing space with quiet, polite creatures today and instead has the reading room all to herself.  She works all morning and when she leaves for lunch, she notices that there are creatures in the rest of the library, and they are all watching her leave.

The vampire claimed that the creatures were flocking to me, not to him. But their behavior today suggested otherwise

Suggested how?  They’re still in the library, and they’re still watching you intently as you leave.  You really believe that just because they aren’t in the same specific room with you, that means they aren’t watching you?  Because they aren’t in the same room as Matthew, either.

I’m supposed to believe that this woman is some award-winning prodigy?

Matthew and Miriam follow her on her lunch break.  Apparently they don’t follow her very closely, though, because we have no mention of them at the coffee shop.  Instead a female daemon named Agatha walks up and introduces herself.  She’s the Australian woman from the previous night, and…really?  That whole thing was set up as some sort of mystery, but we’re going to have it solved a couple pages later by the unknown woman just walking up and saying hi?  Why waste that extra page in the first place, then?

Based on her accounts, daemons constituted a criminal underclass.

Wooooooow.  So, first Diana can’t even stand the creatures sharing air with her, because they’re too close and that’s icky.  Now, a whole race of creatures are all uniformly criminal.  Or perhaps the criminal underclass is made up wholly of daemons, which is almost as bad.

Cherry on the cake?  Agatha is described as having honey-colored skin.  While that’s vague enough to point at a few different ethnicities, ‘Caucasian’ sure as hell isn’t at the top of the list.

 Their superabundance of cleverness and creativity led them to lie, steal, cheat, and even kill, because they felt they could get away with it.

But cleverness and creativity never led them to become, say, writers?  Artists?  Scholars?  Scientists?  Basically any other profession which would value cleverness and creativity?  No, instead they all become murderers?

Wait, does Diana think that creativity and cleverness aren’t scholarly traits?  Because that explains a lot about her.

Apparently daemons pop up out of the blue, born to human parents, and we don’t know what causes them.

To my aunt this only compounded their already marginal position in the hierarchy of beings.

Hierarchy?  Really?  Wow, you’re really laying on the fantastical racism thick, aren’t you, book?

I know that daemons aren’t real, and I’m sure there’s people who will argue that it can’t be insulting if there’s no daemons to insult.  Racism doesn’t count when the races are made up and all that jazz.  Fuck that argument.  Know why?  Because fantastical racism just promotes the idea that racism could ever possibly under any circumstances be permissible.  I don’t care if she’s a witch and Agatha’s a daemon.  We shouldn’t be encouraging the idea that there are any circumstances, even magical ones, where it’s actually okay to judge a person based on the circumstances of their birth.  Shit like this out of fantasy books probably isn’t causing anyone to become more racist than they already were, but it’s permissive, it’s a symptom of a larger disease, and it’s disgusting to look at.

Agatha starts randomly talking about the book, how it had been missing for a long time and the witches did something to it.  Then she shows Diana a news story.  Two men were apparently killed by vampires, and the story makes it clear that ‘vampire’ is just a sensationalist claim and not taken seriously.  Instead the police are treating it like a serial killer and…pretty much fanning the flames of public panic.  Wow, good job there, police.  Way to keep a level head by telling everyone to stay indoors at night.

Diana tells Agatha that she turned in the magic book and doesn’t have it anymore.  But apparently the library isn’t a normal library.

“The library is whatever the witches want it to be,” she went on.

And…???  Oh, I see, you’re not going to explain what the fuck that means.  How nice.  Pages and pages and pages about shit that doesn’t matter, and we don’t even know what this line means, because Diana decides not to follow up on it.  Like it doesn’t even phase her.

Is the library magic?  Do Gillian and her coven control the stacks?  How many witches are even Oxford?  I was under the impression earlier that there were only a few.  And who’s controlling this…maybe-magical/maybe-not library?  Is there some sort of governing system in place?

Well, the book doesn’t want to bother with anything that might actually clear up the worldbuilding, instead it just wants to add to the muddled mess that’s already here.  Agatha explains that the book tells all about daemons.  Since daemons don’t have families of other daemons to support and teach them, they don’t have much of a culture or any knowledge of where they come from or how to do their daemon stuff.  They’re basically at the mercy of humans who fear them.

“Witches have their share of nasty legends to contend with,” I said, thinking of the witch-hunts and the executions that followed.

Oh, fuck off with the witch-hunts already.  They had nothing to do with magic and everything to do with human fear and greed and corruption.  There were real victims and real horrors and being a fantasy witch wouldn’t have even gotten you targeted anyway.  Do some fucking research.

The worst part is that Wiccans/witches do have a lot of nasty legends to contend with, and this book isn’t exactly helping that matter.

Daemons could be visionaries. No one knew if their visions were reliable, like the visions that witches had.

…one assumes this isn’t a recent development.  So, tell me, has a daemon ever had a vision come true?  We’re not exactly talking about fairground fortunetellers, here.  If it’s a real thing that happens, then you can collect data on it, you don’t have to resort to dithering about mysteries.

Agatha’s brown eyes were now melting and warm.

Melting.

Melting.

It took a while, but I officially hate this shitty writing.  It’s like a zombie dressed up in a tuxedo.  Nice accessories, but still a shambling, rotten mess.

“Matthew Clairmont can call the manuscript himself if he wants it so badly.”

Why doesn’t he?  Agatha completely ignores this comment and goes on to talk about ‘when’ Diana gets it back, she should share the daemon story from it, but she doesn’t even bat an eye at Matthew getting the book.  Is it because he can’t?  Why not? 

Why must you explain everything I don’t care about and keep the actual important stuff hostage?

Diana has no fucks to give and goes back to the library.

On an immediate level, the illustrations in Ashmole 782 didn’t seem related to what Agatha Wilson had said the book was about.

BUT IT HAD INVISIBLE MAGIC WRITING ALL OVER IT, WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOUR BRAIN, DIANA?  WHY ARE YOU THE STUPIDEST PRODIGY EVER?

Diana decides to thank Matthew for ‘protecting’ her from all the icky creatures that wanted to sit in her favoritest reading room.

I was determined not to be ungrateful, or bigoted like Sarah and her friends in the Madison coven.

But you’ll still think that the creatures are icky and creepy, even when they just sit there quietly.  And just by thanking Matthew at all, you’re admitting that you need to be ‘protected’ from all those creatures that might work quietly and mind their own business, but too close to your august self. 

And who said Matthew is the one doing that anyway?

Then she asks him to call her Diana.

Matthew Clairmont smiled.

My heart stopped beating for a fraction of a second.

Excuse me while I bang my head on my desk and weep.

Matthew’s nose flared delicately. His smile grew a bit wider. Whatever my body was doing, he had smelled it. What’s more, he seemed to have identified it.

I flushed.

So.  Fucking.  Creepy.

What is this, Twilight for people too embarrassed to just read the original?