Shadow of Night

This is where the annoying stuff has started to override the enchantment. It was fun for a while but by halfway through I was pretty sick of these two aimless main characters who start off with plans and then do anything else other than execute their plan, all the while having stupid arguments and then making up with kisses and fervent “I love you”s. These books could have been waaaay shorter.

Specifically I hate non-consequential magic systems (i.e. magic is ‘free' and therefore can be used to do anything, at any time) since every book I've ever read that has them (Strange and Norrell, Harry Potter etc) has the problem of lots of pointless magic being done for fun and then all of a sudden there's no magic whenever a problem arises. There's no consistency, other than that which is demanded by the plot. It's dumb. This series suffers from the same problem.

Meanwhile we have time travel that seems to work concurrently, it doesn't make any sense. If you can go anywhere in the past or future, then surely when you come back, you can go back to the moment you left, as if you hadn't gone at all? No, in this world, when you go back in the past, for every day you spend there a day passes in “your” time. So when Diana's father visits Elizabethan England for 2 weeks he can't stay longer because his wife is expecting him - he is going to arrive 2 weeks after he left! Huh? When Diana and Matthew return they have been gone 7 months. Meanwhile the things they do only affect history on the same day in their “real” time that they did it in the past? What? None of it makes sense.

No doubt I'll wade through the third book to see how it all ends but I can't say I'm looking forward to it.