All Souls Trilogy Re-read discussion

... but how will it end?

As I mentioned in my earlier message, I will not be joining you on this part of the journey, but please feel free to continue the discussion as you read or re-read TBoL.

I will also post the results of our final poll in a few weeks time!

That's a shame Julie as you have been really great with the group and posted really interesting comments and questions.

Julie wrote:
As I mentioned in my earlier message, I will not be joining you on this part of the journey, but please feel free to continue the discussion as you read or re-read TBoL.
..."
Julie,
Thank you for moderating the group and stimulating some interesting discussions!

Deborah saw my video on DH's Twitter feed and asked me to do a wee piece about Diana Bishop's Commonplace Book which I received from Penguin USA.

The book has been made to look aged which gives it an authentic look. It is meant as a souvenir of SoN, as it has some of the things that Diana wrote in her book in SoN.
There are recipes for migraine relief, Ginger Breade, How to remove ink stains from your fingers/hands - this might be handy for those of us who use fountain pens!!
There is a wee diary bit with just the initials of those she met on what day.
Two poems written by Matthew.
There is a map of where the lodge is in comparison to the village. I found this useful to get bearings on exactly how close to the village they were.
Some sayings by wise men.
Her TBR list!! I am not sure I would want to read them, they look heavy going to me from the titles.
A diagram of the lodge, really good to be able to picture how the lodge was put together and gives you a better understanding of the rooms and it makes it easier to imagine Diana and Matthew there.
There is then writing about the various zodiac signs, as used in TBoL.
An entry referring to their impending trip to France and what Diana is taking with her.

All the writing is done in lovely script and there are empty pages where you can write your own thoughts, TBR and anything else you want.

All in all a really lovely book that I am really pleased to have.

Readsandeats wrote: "Deborah saw my video on DH's Twitter feed and asked me to do a wee piece about Diana Bishop's Commonplace Book which I received from Penguin USA.

The book has been made to look aged which gives it..."

That's lovely, Readsandeats. I will pass your comments on to the designer. I'm sure she'll be very pleased. Thank you!

I thought I would ask a question since we are on our own now. What to you think about the topic of religion in the AST series? The book detoured away from the traditional vampire narrative - that vampires are lost souls doomed to hell. Matthew does not seem at all to wrestle with Christianity and his vampiric nature. Or is this another secret that hasn't come out yet in his long life?

Matthew, despite his great age, does not seem to have lost his faith. He is still a practicing catholic, as evidenced by the fact that in SoN he can be found in the parish church prayingband mourning his wife and son who are buried there. Also, Phillip insists on a Catholic wedding for Matthew and Diana before he would accept their marriage. Neither Matthew nor Phillip seem to question whether or not they hwve souls.

Lesley wrote: "I thought I would ask a question since we are on our own now. What to you think about the topic of religion in the AST series? The book detoured away from the traditional vampire narrative - that..."

Thanks for initiating, Lesley. I misunderstood and thought there would be moderated discussion of the trilogy.

See “Ask Deborah Harkness” discussion where she answered a question about Matthew being religious.

Beyond the historical religious/political issues that occurred in the time period of SoN, I think Matthew’s faith as a vampire is yet another example that D.H. is using to shatter stereotypes in the trilogy’s underlying theme of tolerance and freedom to be who you really are and love without fear of prejudice and persecution. Notice that Matthew and Diana make no attempt to try to “convert” each other to their respective religious/spiritual beliefs. A family celebration in TBoL has pagan and Church ceremonies.

Jeffrey wrote: "Matthew, despite his great age, does not seem to have lost his faith. He is still a practicing catholic, as evidenced by the fact that in SoN he can be found in the parish church prayingband mourni..."

Philippe insisted on a *church* wedding. It was a Catholic wedding as Catholicism was the predominant religion of the area then. The church wedding was to insure Diana’s legal status as Matthew’s wife. You recall that Philippe wanted to cover the bases in making Diana his daughter to protect/help her. It seems that privately Philippe preferred the old pagan (nature-based) religion. Sept-Tours celebrated Saturnalia. In making his offering to Artemis (the goddess Diana) the night before Diana’s marriage to Matthew, he tells Diana that he would have offered more money to the goddess (to symbolize Diana’s worth), but he “had to save some for Matthew’s god too.”

Vampires were born human, therefore they have souls.

This was something that really bothered me and I was actually the one that asked Deborah about it. As much as I respect her intelligence and her amazing writing I was disappointed in her answer. To me it's totally unlikely that Matthew would hold to his religion for many reasons. One being that he was friends with Darwin and is an award winning scientist. One who knows anything about evolution and the history of the universe knows that it is not a mere 6,000 years old. Also, he has killed a lot of people and that would for sure go against his commandments. Not to mention he knows the afterlife and life in general is not what the religious make it out to be. Deborah brought up astrology, which as someone (and anyone) who has studied astronomy knows that the signs aren't accurate, these group of constellations encompass more than 12 and aren't in equal parts (as used to signify months) at all. Ask any astrophysicist and they will tell you it is a made up science.

Thanks everyone for reinvigorating this group! Jeffery (RE:Matthew nor Phillip seem to question whether or not they hwve souls.), I think you are right there. I found it very strange that opening of TBOL had Phillipe and Emily talking together as ghosts and that there was no narrative return to that conversation to bookend the book.

To ask an esoteric question...
Is the Phillipe ghost-form the soul's final destination? He was nature-based/Greco-Roman religion. From my memory of Estruscan/Greek/Rome religions, the afterlife changed through the civilization. At the beginning, the afterlife was to have a dis-satifying shade life and evolved into a garden type afterlife at the height of the Roman Empire. Anyone can correct me if I am wrong...

Thoughout the books, the witches paganism afterlife had a ghost-afterlife. A final destination for the soul?

Deborah wrote: Phillipe insisted on a *church wedding.."

The books characters seemed very okay with parallel belief systems between humans, witches, once-human vampires, etc. Other than an occasional mention by Diana's character about Christians being uncomfortable about paganism. This does support Harkness's theme of tolerance.

I like to think that Phillipe's insistence of a church wedding was to satisfy Matthew's deep rooted Catholicism and also to legitimatize the marriage in the eyes of the household and the townspeople around Sept-Tours.

Eliza wrote: This was something that really bothered me...

Eliza, I just went back and re-read your q and a with Harkness. I see what you mean. Matthew has lived through many different ways to see the world from being sick because a wrong-doing, to learning that disease is from germs, to a very religion-minded lifestyle to today's more secular life. He never develops the skeptism/challenge me attitude that the Gen X-er generation is described to have today. I don't know what generation you would call a 1500 year old vampire. :)

I went to a Lutheran college and was a biology major. Evolution was taught as a part of our curriculum. Some professors held on to the idea of co-existence between their Christian religion and teaching evolution. Like "who is to say that God didn't first touch the earth to bring human life to it" - a less literal interpretation of the Bible belief. Others were atheist/agnostic. Maybe Matthew has a dual belief system in himself, one where evolution starts life in his academia world and another based in Catholic beliefs. In the books, he was very interested in the origin of vampires but never wavered into the idea that vampires were spawned away from God's light.

I wonder why Phillipe's de Clemont family was fighting in the Crusades for the Christians? Probably not for religious ideas. Political reasons? I wonder if there were vampires fighting on the Muslim side?

Are we continuing with discussion for TBoL? I understand that we are without a moderator.

Yeah! Seems we are on our own!

As I am such an eager beaver and finished this re read in a day.
We meet Chris and open up the idea that more humans will be privy to he information of creatures. What effect will that have one people's perception of the world . Perhaps out different genetic creature traits explain some of our geniuses of time that cross the madness creative border.!

Gosh there are a lot of thoughts and ideas being put forward.
I liked the idea that Matthew continued to have his faith and that he used it in a practical sense. I don't think that Vampires couldn't have a faith as they still have human instincts - going to go off on a tangent here and point to Rosalie in the Twilight Saga who wanted to be a mother as a human and encourages and protects Bella when she is pregnant.
Phillipe needed to have the wedding in both religions to pay respect to both Matthew and Diana and it was a really nice thing to do, I agree it was also to protect Diana.
I suspect that Phillipe fought in the crusades because it was what the covenant wanted, that way maybe they could have some sort of control as to what happened. They seem to want to control everything, is that a good thing? I hope that Diana will make a big difference to them.
What did you all think about Baldwin? Did you find him a bully, arrogant and generally a pain? I did to begin with but eventually really liked him.

I really like Phoebe and feel she will bring a lot to the family. She and Marcus are a great partnership and would love to hear more about them.

Chris is a great character and a definite asset to the family. I like the idea that humans are being brought into the circle about other creatures. I think we have know that Chris will be open minded and that is the way it should be.

Julie was only to moderate the first two books as that is all the group was supposed to cover but it has been left open for us to continue if we wish to.

Joanna wrote: "As I am such an eager beaver and finished this re read in a day.
We meet Chris and open up the idea that more humans will be privy to he information of creatures. What effect will that have one pe..."

If Matthew and Diana's world was real, it would blow my mind if I learned that others existed. It's interesting how Chris is all about publishing the data while if I was in that world I would be worried about things on the social-political scale.

REPLY to Readsandeats re Baldwin, Phoebe, and Chris:
What did you all think about Baldwin? Did you find him a bully, arrogant and generally a pain? I did to begin with but eventually really liked him.

I view Baldwin as a brilliant strategist who would never be a great leader like Philippe was as he acts too much like a bulldozer. I respect his abilities, but I wouldn’t consider him to be likeable.
*SPOILER ALERT*
In the end it seemed Baldwin was treating Diana as if she was his administrative assistant which I felt conflicted with the trilogy’s underlying theme of (particularly for Diana)having the courage to be who you truly are.

I really like Phoebe and feel she will bring a lot to the family. She and Marcus are a great partnership and would love to hear more about them.

I was initially suspicious that Phoebe might have been a spy working for Benjamin or Peter Knox.

Chris is a great character and a definite asset to the family. I like the idea that humans are being brought into the circle about other creatures. I think we have know that Chris will be open minded and that is the way it should be.

*SPOILER ALERT*
Agree. It just seems too good to be true though that humans and “humans with a difference” will all play together nicely, as many humans would probably covet creature abilities. I like the pairing of Chris and Miriam.

I have not gotten that far into TBoL yet. I just started it yesterday. So far I see Baldwin as a bully trying to flex what little muscle he has to try and lord his authority over Matthew. Phoebe I wonder about. Has she been reading the Twilight Saga? She's dated a vampire for 15 minutes and now she wants to be one?

Why has Benjamine picked now to resurface? How does he know so much about Ashmole 782? How much does he know about Matthew and Diana, and where is he getting his information?

These are all questions I am looking forward to getting answers to as I continue the story tomorrow and over the next few days while I finish the book.

Deborah wrote: "I was initially suspicious that Phoebe might have been a spy"

Deborah, I was suspicious of Phoebe too!

I think Benjamine has resurfaced because he wants to show Matthew that he can be just like him. I am guessing he knows so much because he has been following Matthew and Diana for a while and could have spies.

As for Phoebe I liked her from the start and was not suspicious. There is a resemblance to Twilight in that pairing.
SPOILER ALERT!! Who does everyone think Marcus has chosen to be her sire? My guess would be Gallowglass.

Deborah I too like the Chris and Miriam pairing, would like to see them stay together.