Tag: magicians

Magic for Liars by Sarah Gailey

- Callen Leave a comment

One of Sarah Gailey’s older works (relatively speaking – after this 2019 volume came a flurry of hits including 2020’s Upright Women Wanted and 2021’s The Echo Wife), Magic for Liars is a feminist gumshoe detective story set in the American version of Harry Potter’s world. While highly original, the story pays homage to a number of tropes: magic abounds in an impossible high school (complete with a boy convinced he’s the Chosen One of prophecy), our cynical narrator spends lots of time brooding in bars even while investigating a grisly murder that has shocked the community, and two estranged sisters forced together must finally face what has divided them. Best of all, a sapphic thread runs through the characters – women loving women is common and routine in this world, though it may have been a motive for murder…

Ivy Gamble is almost successful as a private investigator. She’s almost got a handle on her drinking. And she’s almost definitely not jealous of her magically-gifted sister Tabitha. When a suspicious death rocks the school where Tabitha is a professor of Theoretical Magic, Ivy is called in to investigate. Out of her depth in the investigation and in the world of magic, Ivy quickly starts to question everything she thought she knew about magic, the world, her sister, and herself.

Gailey has created such a unique character in Ivy – she’s a mix of Stephanie Plum’s flawed detective and Petunia Evans Dursley’s bitter resentment, but fully lucid of her flaws, and able to grow, change, and face her mistakes. Tabitha, meanwhile, has the charm of Lily Evans and the haughty emotional distance of Minerva McGonagall (if either of those icons had been lesbians) but the obsessive, secretive temperament of Severus Snape. Spoilers — this is a risky combination. I don’t know that I was totally convinced by the book as a whole — between the mystery, the sibling tension, the high school drama, facing personal demons, AND an unlikely romance, it seemed like the book was trying to do too much and didn’t do each component full justice — but as a reinvention of classic tropes it’s very clever and original, and the normalization of queer identities is very refreshing.

More than that, the pace of the book was addictive, and ended in a way that leaves the reader wondering whether the book was supposed to be part of a bigger, as yet unfinished, story. Will Ivy ever get a sequel to continue her journey? Only time will tell; for now I do recommend this book to all those who enjoy books with gumshoe murder mysteries, high school drama, estranged siblings, bizarre modern magic, and all the dark sides of love.

The Death of Jane Lawrence by Caitlin Starling

- Anna Leave a comment

“She could reorder their world and keep him safe. They did not need to build a new fiction together, for she could make reality.”

It has been a while since I have had the pleasure of immersing myself in a Gothic story, so I was psyched to get my hands on The Death of Jane Lawrence by Caitlin Starling. Published in October, Starling’s third novel is a blend of horror and psychological thriller infused with all of your favorite Gothic tropes, from the old and dilapidated haunted house, to the labyrinth in the home’s family crypt, to supernatural hauntings and magical rituals (not to mention a cursed husband!). Without further ado, let’s dive into this intoxicating read.

Taking place in a fictional setting akin to post-war Great Britain, but with anachronistic cultural aspects reminiscent of the 1800s, this story revolves around two primary characters: Jane, a strong and practical female protagonist, and Dr. Augustine Lawrence, a renowned surgeon with a small practice in the town of Larrenton. Realizing she must marry in order to continue her professional work as an accountant, Jane considers several eligible men in town before offering a business-like arrangement to Augustine. In this arrangement, they would marry solely on professional grounds, with no intimacies expected or desired, in order to advance in their respective occupations. After due hesitation and consideration, Augustine agrees to the proposal under one strict condition: Jane must never stay with him at Lindridge Hall, his family’s manor just outside of town.

Naturally, this condition is quickly broken just a week later upon their wedding day. After having dinner together at Lindridge Hall, Jane leaves at nightfall to stay at Augustine’s surgery in town, but is thwarted from returning when a heavy rainstorm overturns her carriage. Resigned to walking back to the manor, certain her newly-wedded husband would understand the extenuating circumstances of her return, she quickly finds herself experiencing a very different side of Augustine – one who is terrified, haunted, and seemingly at a remove from reality. Upon waking in the morning, however, Augustine acts as if nothing out of the ordinary occurred. As circumstance after circumstance prevents her from leaving the hall, Jane begins to learn of dark secrets Augustine is hiding from her and everything she thought to be true starts to unravel around her.

Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed reading this novel and appreciated the deep and complex character development of both Jane and Augustine. They are both extremely complicated characters, as is their relationship throughout the book, and I enjoyed not knowing who to trust as I read the story. I also enjoyed how every page dripped with Gothicism; it reminded me of Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia, so I would highly recommend this book for anyone who enjoyed that novel (here is a blog I wrote on that title last year). I also highly recommend this book to anyone who enjoys a good dose of horror heavily steeped in psychology. I know I will definitely be following Starling’s future releases and reading her first two novels!

DISCLAIMER: While I did enjoy this book, I will admit several passages were a bit hard to read due to their gruesome nature; this primarily comes from descriptions of medical procedures and magical rituals.

This title is also available in the following formats:

Overdrive eBook

The Magicians

- Stephanie Leave a comment

Full disclosure: I have the hardest time reading or watching anything with magic. Suspending reality is very difficult for me, especially when that suspension involves negating laws of physics or science or math. I’m a slightly more left-brained person (in case you couldn’t tell by my inability to handle anything that defies logical thinking), so anything with magic needs to be crafted in a way that I find believable. The television show, The Magicians, which premiered on Syfy in 2015, has elements of believable magic(at least to me), plus really engaging character development and background information, that allowed me to suspend my logical brain for a little while.

The Magicians is what I think Harry Potter would be like for grown-ups. Just imagine Hogwarts as a college and BAM! You’ve got The Magicians. The main characters of this show are college students looking to get into different graduate schools. Quentin Coldwater is an awkward student who has been selected for an alumni interview for a prestigious university. As he and his best friend, Julia, walk into the interview, strange things begin happening.

Quentin finds himself admitted to Brakebills University for Magical Pedagogy(which is NOT the college that he had the interview for). Brakebills is a secret university located in upstate New York dedicated to all things magic. Quentin and his friends at Brakebills are thrust deep into the world of magic. They are learning more and more every day about their powers, but learning to control them proves difficult.  Each student has an interview/test to figure out what kind of powers they have, where they will live, and what sort of classes they will take. (Same type of concept as the sorting hat in Harry Potter! Except it’s a teacher testing them..) Quentin and friends are struggling with normal college problems with an added level of magical complications. Watching each student struggle to learn to master even the most basic spells is what made this show believable for me the most.

Add in a magical kingdom called Fillory, the land that Quentin’s favorite book series is based in, and there’s a whole new level of mystery involved! They soon find out that this magical fantasy world is actually very real. The consequences this discovery has on not only the students, but on humanity as a whole, is catastrophic and very dangerous. This television show is incredibly layered with multiple plots running simultaneously. I found this to be refreshing because it allows each character to become fully developed and have their own separate storyline that is still connected to the others. Highly recommended.

This television show is based on the book The Magicians by Lev Grossman. This book is the first in the Magicians Trilogy, which is:

  1. The Magicians
  2. The Magician King
  3. The Magician’s Land