The Black Bird Oracle

Bestseller Harkness carries the contemporary fantasy world of her All Souls series (after 2018’s Time’s Convert) into a new generation with this messy adventure. Pip and Becca, the seven-year-old hybrid vampire-witch twins of New England witch Diana Bishop and French vampire geneticist Matthew de Clermont, are due to be examined for their own eerie talents by the shadowy Congregation. Diana, fearful for them and anxious yet eager to expand her own higher-magic powers, is summoned by ravens to meet her father’s relatives in Ravenswood, near Ipswich, Mass., where she and her children endure occult meetings with assorted family ghosts. She also receives magical tarot coaching from Great-Aunt Gwyneth and battles inimical local witch Meg. Matthew, previously the series’ wolfish romantic lead, here subsides into a supportive househusband so that Diana, fueled by rabid curiosity and sluiced with endless tea, can pursue her supernatural vocation. There’s little heat for romantasy fans to latch onto, and the payoff of the twins’ testing is made to wait for future installments. Readers will wish they had an annotated family tree to understand the tangled web of Diana’s relations. The result is ambitious, long-winded, and a bit of a muddle. (July)