Roanoke: Solving the Mystery of the Lost Colony by Lee Miller

This book purports to solve the mystery of the Lost Colony. I think it offers a fairly plausible solution--but I am by no means convinced that it is the only solution. Miller asserts that conspirators in England who wanted to hurt Sir Walter Raleigh made sure that the colonization mission would be unsuccessful, that while some colonists went to Croatan, the majority were enslaved in the interior of what is now North Carolina, and that Roanoke was a dangerous place to stay because of two previous English expeditions which had mistreated the Native Americans. I think Miller's approach was useful--I appreciate that she considers the bigger picture, and not just the colonists themselves. She hasn't convinced me that her solution is entirely correct. The style of the book is a little odd: it's neither quite scholarly (there are lots of footnotes, but it seems more colloquial than most monographs), nor written for popular consumption. Still, I think this book broadened my knowledge of what happened in North America in the sixteenth century, and it gave me a lot to think about--all in a very enjoyable package.

Shadow of Night by Deborah Harkness

This book picks up where A Gathering of Witches left off: Matthew and Diana travel back in time to Elizabethan England to look for a manuscript known as Ashmole 782 which promises to reveal secrets about witches, vampires, and demons. Matthew was still a bit heavy handed for my tastes, but we did get to see more of Diana's power--and just as importantly--to get some explanation of why she has the powers she does. We also got a number of historical cameos, including Queen Elizabeth I, Kit Marlow (who has been both daemonized and demonized in this retelling), and, all too briefly, William Shakespeare. There was a lot of historical detail (it probably doesn't hurt that Deborah Harkness is an esteemed historian of seventeenth century England in addition to writing novels and blogging about wine), which added to the atmosphere of the piece. At times it felt like obstacles were thrown up and then almost immediately brushed away (for example, when Matthew takes Diana to his family home in France, Matthew's father Philippe insists that Matthew and Diana are not married and should not marry, but by the end of the section, less than a month later, throws them a lavish wedding). The mysteries of the Ashmole 782 only continue to grow; even though we get to see it again, the reader is left with questions instead of answers--but now it seems that the book is more an object or possession than a book. It's all setting things up for the third and final volume of the trilogy.