Title: Time’s Convert
Series: All Souls
Author: Deborah Harkness
Publisher: Viking
Publication date: September 18, 2018
Length: 436 pages
Genre: Supernatural/contemporary/historical fiction
Source: Purchased
Rating:

I adored the world of Deborah Harkness’s All Souls books back when I first read them, and gobbled up each book in the original trilogy as soon as they were released. At the time of the 3rd book’s publication, it seemed like the story had reached its conclusion. But then, in 2018, the author released a fourth book, Time’s Convert, to continue the story and expand the world of All Souls even further. Naturally, I couldn’t resist, and bought a copy right away… and there it sat on my bookshelf for six years!

With the announcement of a new book in the series coming this summer, I realized it was finally time to dive back in. Fortunately, having recently watched the TV adaptation of A Discovery of Witches, I wasn’t going in cold, which ended up being a very good thing. This is a big, sprawling, complicated fictional world, and without the reminders provided by watching the series, I probably would have been lost.

The framing of Time’s Convert is a human-to-vampire transformation. Phoebe Taylor, the human beloved by Matthew’s son Marcus Whitmore, is ready to be reborn as a vampire in order to truly unite with Marcus and spend eternity with him. Making a vampire is serious business, with many terrible ways it can go wrong, and the de Clermont clan is taking no chances. Under the supervision of elder family members Miriam and Freyja, Phoebe’s rebirth will be carefully controlled and monitored each step of the way.

Unfortunately for Marcus, part of the process means that he cannot see Phoebe again until she is 90 days old as a vampire — infant vampires are too unpredictable and impulsive to make good choices, and Phoebe must actually choose to be with Marcus before they are officially mated. This leaves Marcus with a summer of anxious waiting, and he passes the time with Matthew and Diana, who hope to support him and ease his obsessive revisiting of the old memories that plague him.

Meanwhile, Matthew and Diana are dealing with potential crises of their own. Their toddler twins, Becca and Philip, are something unheard of in their world — a melding of vampire and witch genetics. Both display unusual traits, and raise alarms for others in the family, who worry that their powers, if not placed under tight control, could spell disaster for them all.

The book shifts focus between the three main plotlines: Phoebe’s transformation, Marcus’s history, and Matthew, Diana, and the twins.

Phoebe’s story is fascinating. We’ve never spent this kind of time in the series on the day to day ritual and challenges of vampire infancy and development. Through Phoebe, we learn all sorts of interesting bits and pieces about vampire appetites, food sources, sensitivity to light and sound, and more.

Marcus’s story is truly the heart of Time’s Convert, taking up more space than the other two plotlines. We go back to colonial New England, where we see Marcus’s life as the son of a cruel, domineering father, and what he must do to break free. Eventually, Marcus leaves home to join the revolution, and is present at the battle of Bunker Hill as well as with Washington’s forces in Pennsylvania and elsewhere. He learns about healing and becomes a surgeon, although without the means to get a formal education in medicine. Dying of one of the rampant fevers in a military camp, Marcus is offered the chance for new life by Matthew, and the next phase of his life begins.

We spend the next large chunk of time with Marcus in Paris, where he becomes embroiled with Marat, Danton, and other leaders of the French revolution. Only through the intervention of the de Clermont patriarch is Marcus finally forced to leave Paris before the Terror of the revolution ensnares him. From there, Marcus’s life continues in Edinburgh, New Orleans, and elsewhere, and finally leads him to where we know him in the present day.

As for Diana and Matthew, it’s quite interesting to see them grapple with understanding their children’s powers. They must struggle with raising their children as they wish while also addressing the concerns and even demands of the family’s leader, who wants them controlled no matter what. Also, there’s a very cute griffin!

Time’s Convert is under 500 pages, but it feels much longer. It’s jam-packed with people, places, historical events, and the internal mythology of the series. Many chapters and interludes move quickly, but there’s an overall heaviness to the reading experience — there’s just so much to take in.

The Marcus sections seem to move the slowest, especially before his vampire transformation. Until that point, it’s straight-up historical fiction set during the American revolution, which is fine, but not really what I come to the All Souls books to experience. Once Matthew gets involved, things pick up quite a bit, and the sections set in Paris and New Orleans are much more engaging as well.

Overall, I’m very happy to have returned to the world of All Souls! Part of me wishes I’d taken the time to reread the first three books before reading Time’s Convert — but honestly, who has the time? If I’d waited to do a reread, chances are I never would have gotten to Time’s Convert.

Being familiar with the details of the earlier books in the series is crucial for appreciating Time’s Convert and making sense of the complicated interconnectedness of the details and plot points. As I mentioned, the TV adaptation of the trilogy is a great shortcut — it’s not perfectly faithful to the books, but it’s close enough to provide an immersion back into that world. Another wonderful resource is The World of All Souls, a reference book (also released in 2018) that includes detailed synopses, character information, maps, and more. I kept it handy throughout this past week while reading Time’s Convert.

The next book in the series, The Black Bird Oracle, will be released in July 2024. I’ve already preordered my copy, and can’t wait to get started!

Synopsis (Goodreads):

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.