Customer Reviews

The Magic Circle

5 star:		(169)
4 star:		(27)
3 star:		(26)
2 star:		(19)
1 star:		(69)

 

 

Be prepared for a whirlwind of ideas, surprises, time jumping, and a family tree that has branches so heavily overlapping that you need to note it down--have a pad and pen ready!

But truly, the book has a unique flavor all its own. I've read it as well as the other comments, and I'm frankly surprised by those who think that Katherine Neville is trying to keep a 'trend' that is supposed to be a 'winning formula'. Writers have a style, and Neville's style of taking jumps from time to time is very well plotted and maneveured. It can keep you spellbound. If someone says the book is boring, I hope curious readers will take my word for it that it is absolutely not.

I can't say enough about 'The Magic Circle'--history buffs, and all those who love to speculate about certain historical figures, will find them coming to life in all kinds of ways and presented in a different light altogether. This story is full of subtle nuances of human psychology, intelligence--oh dear me yes, is it ever intelligence--power, family, and love. Lust plays its role, but it's not what the story evolves around, and I agree completely that Neville has produced 'quality fiction'.

Doubtless for some it may seem that Neville has written out of her time (no pun intended). I prefer to call her work timeless.

While The Eight is by far my favorite book I waited to read The Magic Circle until I had the time to devote to it. Good thing I did as the plot is even more tricky than The Eight.

While the general plot is set up in a similar way to The Eight the topic is vastly different and somewhat confusing. The dual story is set in and around the time of Jesus and then interwoven with modern day. I would suggest keeping a pad and paper handy when reading this book as the myriad of characters can sometime be difficult to keep up with (as are the family relations of some of the characters).

Beyond the fact that it helps if you have a basic education in the birth of Christianity, the plot was interesting and the writing was excellent. It was interesting to see what the world might have been like during the life of Jesus as well as to see what he and his disciples and enemies might have thought about him (just know that this is not an overly religious book nor is Katherine making any judgments on any religion or religious person in The Magic Circle).

While some things seemed a little far fetched, I had to remind myself that The Magic Circle is fiction and that the author has artistic license. Katherine tends to write grand, vivid, sweeping descriptions and full bodied, interesting characters and she did not disappoint on that level.

All in all, I will read this book again but The Eight still remains her masterpiece - I doubt that The Magic Circle will ever have a following the way The Eight does - I guess that trying to re-use a magical idea rarely works twice.

I did like The Magic Circle, I guess I just need to remember that it is not The Eight and that I should not compare the two as much as I did the first time through this book. A definitely good read.

Katherine Neville is a truly gifted writer. Her books are well researched, paced to keep you turning the pages, and are definitely more "literate" than the offerings of most authors in this genre. If you thought the DaVinci Code was good, you'll think Magic Circle is great. After you read this one...try her book "The Eight". It's amazing!

The Magic Circle is a wonderful, fascinating adventure novel. After her cousin's violent death (or so we think), Ariel Behn, a nuclear security expert in Idaho, finds herself heir to a mysterious collection of manuscripts which contain the key to an ancient and powerful secret. In addition to Ariel's story, which is set in 1989, The Magic Circle contains many historical elements; as she travels across Europe, where her boss has sent her, Ariel discovers many secrets about her extremely complex family, all of whom were involved in the search for the secret in the manuscripts. There is also a parallel plot set in ancient Rome, Jerusalem, and Britain, involving many historical figures. Katherine Neville's knowledge of history is amazing! I learned so much from reading this book, just as I did from reading her novel The Eight. I didn't think it was quite as good as The Eight, but that's not saying much, since The Eight is my favorite novel of all time. In particular, I thought the ending was a bit anticlimactic, and some of the revelations about Ariel's family were a little hard to take. But these are only minor complaints. I still consider The Magic Circle one of my favorite books.

This book starts out with some interesting action and a good number of interesting characters. It captures your attention when it starts bringing in historical characters in thought provoking settings and circumstances. But although you expect all of the separate threads to come together into a single story line, they don't. There's no satisfactory resolution to the events and people spread over millenia. Maybe I'm missing something, but this just seemed to be a tangled, fraying mess of a story. And I still haven't quite gotten over the main character falling madly and passionately in love with her cousin. Yuck.

Out of curiosity I happened to read the reviews of Katherine Neville's The Magic Circle, and I was shocked to find that many of them seemed cranky, almost hostile toward the author. I wondered--why? I read the book on a coast-to-coast flight last spring, and I don't think I even raised my eyes the whole time it was such a satisfying experience. Neville is such a good writer, the plot was a puzzle of course (her speciality), and her characters zany, interesting women. Ah. Is that it? The women are truly Characters, all of them, but especially the heroine, Aphra Behn, is a free-wheeling, liberated, unnattached, cool, autonomous female at the center of a murder mystery involving world governments and reincarnational events. And Neville herself is such a brainy, funny, polished writer--a woman with eccentricities and a mind like the net woven by Spider Woman. Sure, I couldn't keep all the details in my head either (one of the main complaints of the reader reviews), but so what? It's a mystery for heaven's sake. It's a novel. It's for relaxing, and in the meantime you get to find out fascinating details about the Cumaean Sybil, the Goddess and her dying god, corruption in the nuclear power industry, Native American initiation ceremonies, and SO MUCH MORE! Maybe Neville's books will have to start carrying a warning label: NOT FOR ANYONE WITH A SHORT ATTENTION SPAN; or maybe better yet, FOR BRAINY WOMEN ONLY (& the men who love them).

What a waste of time reading this mish-mash of historical and pseudo-historical facts was for me. I began reading it with great anticipation, but my hopes were soon dashed in the complicated morass of the plot. It was nearly impossible for me to keep track of all the characters and all the unbelievable turns of events. I'm glad that I bought my copy at a library book sale for 30 cents. I liked Ms Neville's previous book, The Eight, much better.

After reading Neville's book "The Eight" I was excited to get her other books. However, after reading "The Magic Circle", I was disapointed. The book lacks cohesiveness. She tries to hard to make the book have the plot twists and revelations that made "The Eight" so interesting. This causes the story to lose momentum at critical times. Other reviews recommend that you make a list of characters so you won't be lost. Well, you can do that if you want, but for this book it seems a bit too much trouble for the "reward" of the story. If I am going to work that hard, I want to read "Shogun" or "Aztec". If you are a die hard Neville fan, I suppose you will read it anyway- just don't get your hopes up.

Okay, I read "The Eight," by this author, and I have to say, it was one of my favourite books, hands down, ever. "The Magic Circle," really really really fell short of that. Now, granted, I listened to it abridged on four audiocassettes, but it just didn't... flow.

Basically, the tale is thus: Ariel Behn, daughter of a really complex family structure, inherits something when her half-blood cousin (maybe) is killed, and that something might get her killed. So when her gypsy/german/rom/aryan/aboriginal/you-name-it various half-incest-inbred-orphan relatives come out of the woodwork to try and stop her / lie to her / mislead her / confuse her / rob her / seduce her, she's left confused.

So is the reader. By the third time you find out that the people she thought were her grandparents aren't, or that her lover is actually the half-brother of her cousin's uncle, who raped his maid before forcing her to marry him... yadda yadda yadda. It gets old, fast. And the notion of the various texts and manuscripts that Ariel is researching that might lead to some astounding knowledge just don't get enough play-time. In "The Eight," it was the pieces of the chess set, and the rich history, that was interesting. In "The Magic Circle," it just didn't work, and the manuscripts are never quite explained at all. The weaving between the past - set in 32 AD during the last week of the life of Christ, and the present - 1989, during the confusion of Gorbechev's Russia, don't mesh, mix, or really interconnect the way the various time periods did in "The Eight."

If you like multi-generational family (melo)dramas, it might be your thing, but for me, this just fell a little flat.

'Nathan

Katherine Neville's other two books are loads of fun - The Eight is a fantastic book, and A Calculated Risk is really entertaining, even if it doesn't hold together as well. But I was really disappointed with this book. The plot falls apart early in the book, and it goes downhill from there. I didn't care at all about the characters, and the whole book feels like the author is simply trying too hard. Read Neville's other two books and stop there.