Greer Macallister

A solid historical fiction read about a real-life heiress, Aimee Crocker in the late 1800s-early 1900s. Aimee is anything but conventional, especially for the time. She believes in love, marriage, divorce, and palm readers. To say Aimee is complicated would be a disservice, and to say The Thirteenth Husband told the entire story would be insurmountable. This Aimee Crocker lady lived one helluva life and Greer Macallister did a good job capturing the most believable parts of it.

I will say I got a bit lost toward the end when the twist came about; I knew who the thirteenth husband was, but I felt the writing got a little in the weeds of the paranormal to where I had to fight the cobwebs to figure out what was going on. That being said, I'm glad to have read this book, admire Macallister's research and story abilities, and will look to read another Macallister book in the future.… (altro)

Recommended: for other people
For a world of many characters, for a book that's more about the journey than the destination, for a lot of backstory and build up and a very sudden resolution

Thoughts:
Alright, here's my biggest gripe: the ending was terrible. It was extraordinarily disappointing and underwhelming, and it annoyed me that I waited all this time to see it and it was spectacularly crap. Both endings, I'll say, since there's kind of two key plot points that get wrapped up. This is why I say this book is about the journey, and definitely not the destination. There's no strong resolution here, and ultimately, you could probably read the second book in the series without reading this one and be well off.

For me this was a mostly ok read because it wasn't AWFUL, but it was kind of boring with very little payoff for all the time I put in. Considering I read a 500 page fantasy book in [book:The City of Brass|32718027] this month in three days, and this one at around 450 pages took me about a month speaks volumes. It just didn't suck me in. While I was reading it, I meandered my way through the story slowly, plodding along with the characters. But in between reading sessions, I never particularly felt called to go back to it. It was more of a desire to finish it than a desire to see it finished, if you get what I mean.

And WOW, were there a lot of characters. I can't even name how many character perspectives we followed, because there were probably 9 or 10. Remarkably, I didn't care about any of them. I think this is due to the fact that with so many, none got a solid stream of attention to develop and catch my empathy. The story also spans many years, with gaps of decades or years at a time, so I would come back to a very different person than I had originally met. I essentially had to start over with them.
This is why when some of the characters died, I didn't care at all beyond some mild annoyance that now I had to meet a new character and learn about them instead.

I saw some other reviews point out other issues, such as the society where men are just things to have sex with and be concubines, essentially. Or a scene where a young girl is consoled about the death of her friend by another adult woman giving her an orgasm with a sex toy. What the fuck? These are valid points, and yet I was in such a haze reading through this that they barely registered at the time because I was just plodding through the pages.

Now I realize this sounds like a lot of complaints, and for me, this book just didn't really work. However, I do think this is a read that will work for other people. For people who love character studies, and slower paced reads with a lot of exploration of the world and mind, this will probably be a hit. If you like long-spanning plot with a lot of reflective qualities, and don't mind slower action, then this will probably do you good.

And some quick extra spoiler-y ranting about the ending:
Seriously, the ancient, cosmically-powerful sorceress is killed by some regular mortal snapping her neck?? How incredibly fucking boring is that?? I waited 400 pages to get to this point and I felt slightly betrayed and a whole lot confused. Why did we even bother with Sessadon if she didn't matter enough to even cause some havoc before she went on out? As for the final ending where Tamura declares that Scorpica is still invading despite the end of the drought, I just don't care. War is a boring plot, and I never liked any of the characters involved, so there's no emotional fear of like "oh no they'll be invaded!" so... nothing about this worked. I almost stopped reading this book at about 86%, just before the final Rites of the Sun, and I kind of wish I had because then I could have imagined a better ending and left it at that.

Thank you to NetGalley and the author for a free advanced copy of this book. This is my honest review.… (altro)

What an inspiring, daunting journey! I love historical fiction and the experiences I imagine while traveling through history in the story. This story has certain actual events and actual people from history tossed in with the fictional story, and I googled a lot of information because the story piqued my interest!
We follow Virginia and the diverse collection of fellow female adventurers on their Artic expedition, thanks to an insistent Lady Franklin who wants to know what happened to her husband. The story goes back and forth from their adventures to the trial where Virginia is accused of murdering one of the several women who never returned from the expedition.
I'm impressed with the research involved in this story. I felt as if I was back in the 1840s on the ship, traveling across the frigid tundra, fighting for my life, and caring about the band of women thrown together. Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for providing me a copy of this interesting novel.… (altro)

I received an e-arc of this book from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for my honest review. This did not affect my opinion of the book in any way.

The Magician's Lie is an excellent read if, like me, you're fascinated by anything magic-related - even when the magic is just a trick. This is one of those books that always left me wanting more: more time with the characters, more time to read it. My only regret is that I picked this up in a fairly busy period, and so I couldn't dedicate as much time as I wanted to reading it. But, in the time I had available, it kept me glued to the page from the very beginning!

The Amazing Arden, or Ada, was a most intriguing character. She is an incredibly strong-willed and gifted young woman, and the abuse she endures as a child only makes her resolve greater. I really admired her ability to build her own life form scratch and to a way out of any difficult situation. Her story completely captured Virgil's attention, and mine with him.

Up until the very end, I kept wondering whether she had actually done what she was accused of - was this the magician's lie or was she being truthful? I liked the conclusion, but most of all, I liked the journey to discovering what had happened. The writing was excellent and the characters were wonderfully complex, even though some of them (like Virgil) feel merely instrumental to Arden's storytelling. My only complaint is that some passages detailing how Arden set up her show were a bit too long and slow for my taste - but that's only personal taste!

If you like a captivating thriller/mystery in a wonderfully detailed historical setting, this book is definitely for you. The Magician's Lie will keep you wondering right up to the end: what is true, and what is just an illusion?… (altro)