When Night Breaks

 When Night Breaks by Janella Angeles, 480 pages.

In this sequel to Where Dreams Descend, Kallia finds herself trapped in a world stranger and more magical than she could have imagined. Spectaculore may be over, but the world of magicians she finds herself in isn't any less cutthroat than the world she came from.

This book is very stylish, but I'm afraid that's all I can say for this extremely underwhelming sequel. Despite being presented as the answer to the mysteries of the last book, it doesn't actually answer very many of the open questions, sometimes feeling like it is actively contradicting the first book. I also didn't find the ending of this book, which also concludes the series, very satisfying. This is such an unfulfilling sequel that it makes it harder to recommend the first book, knowing that many of the most intriguing questions won't get any satisfying answers.  

Moon Over Soho

 

Moon Over Soho (Rivers of London series #2) by Ben Aaronovitch  375 pp.

Peter Grant returns as a London Police Constable / Sorcerer's Apprentice in this second magical installment of the series. This time his investigations turn to the deaths of jazz musicians dropping dead but carrying supernatural signs which show the deaths are magical instead of natural. In the mean time Peter has a new "girlfriend" who is also supernatural but doesn't realize it. While Peter's magical teacher recovers from injuries sustained at the end of the first book, he has to do most of the investigating alone with his limited magical skills. Constable Lesley May, Peter Grant's love interest in the previous book is recovering from the extreme disfiguring injuries she sustained in book one. Because she cannot actively investigate she instead is analyzing old records from Oxford to help with the investigation. To add to the mysterious, magical crimes, a creature Grant calls "The Pale Lady" is killing men she mutilates with her vagina dentata. With all the dangerous supernatural creatures there is quite a bit of grotesque goriness but it is all integral to the story. I have to read the next one to find out how the wizard Thomas Nightingale and Constable May are getting along.

The Librarian of Crooked Lane

 

The Librarian of Crooked Lane by C.J. Archer 284 pp.

Librarian Sylvia Ash knows nothing of her ancestry. Her father was unknown and her mother refused to speak of her family background. When a diary from her brother, a casualty of WWI, suggests there were magicians in the family she doesn't believe it. Sylvia tries to find an answer by consulting a well-born son of a magical family only to find he is not the least bit magical and his magician mother is out of the country. Gabe has survived a harrowing four years of WWI, miraculously without injury. Now he works as a consultant for Scotland Yard in matters of magic. The theft of a magical painting brings Gabe and Sylvia together in the investigation. This story adds a few new twists to the "magical" part of the story but otherwise it seems to be one more in a plethora of stories where simmering romance and magic mix. There are two more books in the "Glass Library" series but I think I'll pass.

The Night Circus

 The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern, 387 pages.

The circus arrives without warning. Le Cirque des Rêves (The Circus of Dreams in English) is a circus like no other. It opens at sundown and closes when the sun rises, and contained within it's countless black and white striped tents are inexplicable wonders. Which are at least a little more explicable if you know that the circus is also the playing field for a game between two young magicians who have been training for it since childhood, even if they don't entirely understand the rules of the game that their mentors committed them to so many years before. But even Marco's protective spells and Celia's best effort can't keep this magical place running forever, and after decades things are starting to break under the strain.

This is a beautiful book. It's deeply atmospheric, and something about the way Morgenstern writes always feels completely transportative to me. The romance in this book also really works for me. The circus itself becomes a love letter, and I find that this in many ways is the heart of the novel. I would absolutely recommend this sprawling, magical story as a great fall read.

A Declaration of the Rights of Magicians

A Declaration of the Rights of Magicians by H.G. Parry, 531 pages

In this alternate history, Parry imagines the late 18th Century as a tumultuous time for British and French, and their Caribbean colonies...but with the added twist of magic. So yes, the French Revolution is led by Robespierre to unseat (and un-head) the aristocracy, but this time Robespierre is a secret necromancer and Marie Antoinette is a fire mage. William Pitt still becomes a very young Prime Minister in Great Britain, but he's got a magical secret of his own. British abolitionist William Wilberforce is still fighting against slavery, but he's also against the unfair restrictions placed on commoners with magical powers (aristocrats, naturally, are allowed to do as they please, magically speaking). 

It's an interesting take on an interesting period in history, and while it's well done, one wonders if the addition of magic is really necessary to "jazz up" this tale. Surely the actual intrigue and conflicts would be enough here. That said, it's a good philosophical fantasy tale, similar to Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell (but without all the obnoxious footnotes).

The Obsidian Tower

The Obsidian Tower by Melissa Caruso, 514 pages

When a book begins with a rhyming mantra about guarding a tower and repeats the line "Nothing must unseal the Door," it's a pretty safe bet that the capital-D Door will be opened somewhere in that book. Well, that's how this book start, and Caruso makes sure we don't have to wait long. Warden of Gloamingard Castle and granddaughter of the castle's immortal Witch Lord, Ryxander's broken magic kills everything it or she touches, and that apparently includes the seal upon the titular block of obsidian, which breaks open and begins unleashing hell (literally, with demons and everything) in the middle of diplomatic talks Ryx is hosting. Can Ryx keep the demons at bay, close the Door, broker peace, AND keep from killing anyone in the process? Who knows?!? But it sure is a hell of a lot of fun watching her try!

I'm a sucker for a good found-family story, and this one definitely has that, as Ryx is literally broken and thus has no friends before the Rookery (a sort of neutral magic investigation squad) turns up. It also has plenty of political intrigue (death! grievances! power struggles! potential world wars!) and the odd bit of flirty verbal sparring. Also: the craziest castle this side of Howl's moving one. This was a bunch of fun, and I can't wait to see what the second book brings when it comes out next year.

The Immortalists

The Immortalists by Chloe Benjamin  346 pp.

This book was not what I expected but I enjoyed it. The four Gold siblings, two boys and two girls, sneak out to visit a fortune teller and are told when they will die. Even though they think what they were told is all phony, those revelations go on to affect their lives. Only one was given the prediction of a long life. Simon, the youngest and sister Klara escape to the west coast for the party culture and show business, Daniel, the elder brother, becomes an army doctor, while older sister, Varya, does longevity research. The book explores the question "Are we the victims or the perpetrators of our own fate?" I listened to the downloadable audiobook which is well read by Maggie Hoffman.

An Unkindness of Magicians

An Unkindness of Magicians by Kat Howard, 354 pages

Unknown to the mundane world, there's an enclave of wealthy magicians living on the Upper East Side of New York City. Every 20 or so years, an event called The Turning takes place, ostensibly to shake up the magicians' power structure by allowing magicians from different Houses to challenge one another to progressively harder duels. While it has the chance to change, generally speaking it doesn't shake things up too much: the Merlin House has been in power for decades and relatively unchallenged in each Turning. But when The Turning comes early, it also brings the arrival of Sydney, an uber-powerful outsider who is bent on truly changing the way magic works.


Something seemed missing from this novel. It went quickly and was similar to a YA book in that sense, but it seemed like Howard skated over the surface when there was SO MANY depths that could have been plumbed. The backstory of The Turning, the role of the magicians in the wider world, how they all passed along their knowledge... and those are just the ones I can mention without spoiling anything. While I enjoyed the light page-turner (it brought to mind what Gossip Girl might be like if Blair Waldorf was a magician), I would have loved to see more depth. That said, this was an interesting concept for a novel, and there's plenty of fodder for discussion at the next Orcs & Aliens book group.

Void Moon

Void Moon / Michael Connelly, 391 p.. read by L.J. Ganser

Cassie Black has success selling cars at an LA Porsche dealership, not a mean feat for someone who's just left prison in Nevada and is still on parole.  Why then does she leave her comfortable new life behind to return to the place where, 6 years earlier, Cassie lost her love and her freedom: the Cleopatra casino on the Vegas strip?  Can she survive one final job?

In order to enjoy a heist, the reader has to like the con and loathe the victim.  As always, Connelly understands good storytelling, so we root for Cassie all the way.   Chock full of action and surprises and, of course, supported with carefully researched technical detail, Connelly entertains with outlandish scenarios that just manage to be plausible. 

The Accidental Alchemist

The Accidental Alchemist by Gigi Pandian  360 pp.

You don't think of alchemists as particularly sympathetic or compassionate people but Zoe Faust is not a typical alchemist. In fact, she doesn't want to be an alchemist at all but circumstances have forced her to renew her talents in that area. The appearance of a living stone gargoyle named Dorian in one of her moving crates and the dead man on her front porch mean she must dust off the old crucibles and get to work to save the dying gargoyle and prevent a new friend from being wrongly convicted of murder. And she is trying to keep a troubled local teen from getting in more trouble. On the plus side, Dorian is a gourmet chef who is happy to keep Zoe fed while she works on the problem of his impending demise. This is a light read with fun characters set in a crunchy-granola Oregon town Zoe has moved to in an effort to escape her past. It is the first book in a series and I just might go on to book two.

The Hawley Book of the Dead

The Hawley Book of the Dead by Chrysler Szarlan   332 pp.

Revelation "Reve" Dyer is an illusionist. She and her stage magician husband, Jeremy, own their own Las Vegas theater where they perform for thousands. Reve accidentally kills Jeremy during the same "Defying the Bullets" trick that killed magician Chung Ling Soo in 1918. Someone switched the blanks in the pistol for live bullets and it becomes clear that whoever that was is after her also. Reve and her three daughters move to Hawley Corners, Massachusetts, a strange, abandoned town with a mysterious history involving Reve's family, When her twin teenage daughters vanish in the woods Reve desperately searches for them with the help of a childhood friend and her first love who is now the chief of police. The appearance of a mysterious book leads Reve to investigate her magical inheritance and expand her powers to fight against the malevolent man who has taken two of her daughters and enchanted the third. This is an interesting, very detailed story. There were a few places that I wished the action moved a little faster but all in all it's a good read.

The Zig Zag Girl

The Zig Zag Girl by Elly Griffiths, 328 pages

When a hacked-into-three-pieces corpse turns up in his office, inspector Edgar Stephens must track down a killer who seems to be hunting the Magic Men, a British WWII unit that used magicians to conjure an illusion of masses of troops near Inverness. Stephens was part of the Magic Men, along with his friend, the illustrious stage magician Max Mephisto, and as more bodies turn up, each killed in a grotesque approximation of one of Mephisto's illusions, the old friends are racing to catch the killer before they get caught themselves.

I like the general idea of this mystery, but the execution was somewhat lacking. Perhaps Griffiths dropped too many hints, but it seemed really obvious to me who the killer was fairly early on. The motive wasn't obvious, but even in the big reveal, it seemed a bit hackneyed. I give this one a hearty "meh."

The Magician King

The Magician King by Lev Grossman, 400 pages

The follow-up to Grossman's The Magicians picks up two years after the first book ended (um, big spoiler alert now if you haven't read The Magicians), with Quentin and three of his friends settling into their roles as the kings and queens of Fillory, a magical land that they had long thought of as fictitious. Quentin, however, is starting to get the itch for adventure again, and boards a boat out to the far reaches of Fillory to see what he can find. What follows is a world-hopping (and by "world hopping" I mean "between worlds") adventure that sends Quentin into the highest highs and lowest lows. Mixed in is the backstory of Julia, Quentin's friend from before Brakebills (the magic college he attended) who appeared at the end of the first book as a powerful hedge witch and future queen of Fillory.

This is a fun series, though it's definitely a darker, more grown up fantasy tale than Narnia and Hogwarts, which, unfairly or not, it's often compared to. The mix of foreign magical lands and pop culture references, along with the sex and drugs and darkness, make this a one-of-a-kind universe. I'm excited to read the third book.

The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie

The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie by Alan Bradley 416 pp.

For those, like me, who enjoy and old fashioned English whodunit, this book is perfect. Young Flavia de Luce lives in a manor house with her family of eccentrics, a reclusive father and two older sisters. Her adventurer mother died years earlier during a mountain climbing expedition. Flavia is a budding young chemist with a predilection for poisons who inserts herself into the mystery with tenacity. The rest of the household includes a cook/housekeeper and the gardner.

When a dead bird with a postage stamp stuck on its beak is left on the doorstep, Flavia is intrigued and must investigate. Things take a serious turn when she later finds a man dying in their cucumber patch. In true British style the mystery has many facets inclucing a decades old death at a boys' school, the theft of valuable stamps, an amateur magician, and blackmail. When her father is arrested for murdering the stranger in the garden Flavia goes into high gear to find out the truth behind it all. This book is great fun and I'm happy to have found a new mystery series.

Violent Cases

Violent Cases by Neil Gaiman  64 pp.

This is a reissue of a graphic novel based on a short story by Neil Gaiman. The story is narrated by Gaiman who is depicted as being behind bars. The jailed Gaiman reminisces about a time in his childhood when he was cared for by Al Capone's osteopath and witnesses events involving gangsters and a creepy magician. The title references the line "Gangsters had tommy guns,- which they kept in violent cases." It's a dark story and the illustrations by Dave McKean are dark and suit the story well. In addition to the story there are commentaries by Gaiman and Alan Moore as well as alternate cover illustrations.

The Secret Life of Houdini

The Secret Life of Houdini: The Making of America's First Superhero by William Kalush and Larry Sloman  592 pp.

I picked this up on a sale table a few years ago and have been reading it in fits and starts since then. I finally sat down to finish it. The authors did extensive research on Harry Houdini (real name Ehrich Weiss), his childhood in Wisconsin, his performing career, and life outside the stage. The story of how a young locksmith's apprentice led to international fame as an escape artist and stage magician is interesting in itself. But Houdini's sideline work is just as interesting. He passed information to British Intelligence while performing in Europe in the days before World War I. He also spent years and much of his own money in efforts to debunk fraudulent spiritualist mediums using trickery to get money from their clients. That work led to the end of his friendship with the author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, an avid believer in spiritualism. Houdini's life was fascinating and as varied as the persona he created for himself. 

Magic Words: the tale of a Jewish boy-interpreter, the world's most estimable magician, a murderous harlot, and America's greatest Indian chief / Gerald Kolpan 400 p.

A fantastic surprise, as well as a minor disappointment.  The surprise for me was Kolpan's amazing and mostly true tale of Julius Meyer, who emigrates from eastern Europe to Omaha just after the Civil War.  He has an almost-supernatural gift for languages, so when he's captured by the Ponca while on a trading mission Julius quickly goes from being their lowly prisoner to the interpreter and right-hand man of the Chief.  A second storyline involves Julius' cousin Alexander, a magician of almost-supernatural ability as well, who takes on a deeply hostile former native American prostitute as assistant.  As Julius falls in love with the Ponca chief's daughter, he comes to occupy a strange and poignant position: having left Europe to escape anti-Semitic persecution, he effectively becomes a member of a nation itself on the verge of annihilation.  Golpan manages to combine deep historical knowledge with the capacity to share that knowledge with the reader in a way that is fresh and vivid, a bit like E.L. Doctorow.

Now for the disappointment: Magic Words is full of subplots and minor characters, every single one of them interesting.  But I suspect that Golpan wanted to write a 1,000-page novel and was asked to cut it down.  (for marketing purposes - who knows?)  The result is a book that often has an amputated feel.  Golpan's skill and the significance of the book's themes could have supported a longer text, and I think the results might have been stunning.  As it is, I still recommend it, and plan to read Golpan's next book.

The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern

The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern, fantasy, 400 pages.
Celia and Marco are bound to Le Cirque des Reves, as it makes it way around the world during the beginning of the 20th century, and to each other in ways they do not initially understand. Trained in magic and set against each other in a competition that could be dark and deadly, they instead turn the circus and their trial into something beautiful, timeless, and full of the longing and love they share. Grown-up magic, but filled with whimsy and childish wonder. -Patrick

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The Magician's Elephant

The Magician's Elephant by Kate DiCamillo 201 pp.

This is a magical story in many ways. A fortuneteller appears and a young orphan named Peter asks if his sister is still alive and where he can find her. The fortuneteller's answer is that an elephant will lead him. This begins an amazing chain of events, including appearance of the elephant. This is one of DiCamillo's best.

The Magician King by Lev Grossman

The Magician King by Lev Grossman, Fantasy, 400 pages This follow-up to 2009's The Magician. Quentin doesn't want to came back. In Fillory the friends from Brakebills, are kings Elliot, Quentin,--okay obviously I wasn't paying attention when I was blogging about this book late at night on the last day of November, so, to continue days later-- Elliot, Quentin, that other character, and Julia don't want to come back, but past events are catching up with them. Julia and her comrades among the hedge-witches are the most interesting part of a story that alternates between the current activities of Quentin, and what happened to Julia while he was off at Brakebills. Again, a splendid blend of the Narnia books people with characters out of Jay McInherney's books.