Customer Reviews

The Magician (Spider World: Epic Visionary Fiction)

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3 star:		(2)
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This series, while not stunning in its voice, has plenty of intellectual intrigue. However, that's all the third book has. In "The Tower," we are taken with the main character, Niall, to the tower. In "The Delta," we are taken with Niall through the perils of the delta. In "The Magician," we are given only brief glimpses into the mystery that is the magician, and nothing more. While there is much to process and digest from Wilson's third book in this series, it offers little closure the way the other two did, especially in terms of action that carries the story of Niall's experiences along. I actively sought out copies of "The Delta" and "The Magician" after years of wondering what happened to Niall after finding the tower. My only hope for "The Shadowland" is that we actually receive resolution from this book, which seems to do little more than add suspense without giving more than additional philosophical crumbs to chew on. I'm starving for the meat of the previous books. I believe given additional editing, this book could have been condensed into a single portion of the fourth book, thus allowing the readers to move forward.

Spider World: The Magician picks up where SW: The Delta left off. The pacing is a little different from the first two books in the series - it starts out almost in the vein of a murder mystery then gradually broadens and deepens to encompass new imaginitive realms. Very involving. Wilson continues to blend ideas skillfully with plot, as he has done in the earlier books in the series. The final page raises great expectations for the next book, SW: Shadowland.

I was tickled to receive this book from my son and daughter-in-law. I had read a similar book many years ago (I'm in my sixties) and was delighted to find that I could buy this book (I) and the others in the series. So happy with the service, too.

The Magician is a very odd entry in the Spider World series; it is really an unfinished book--nothing is really resolved at all by the end, and Colin Wilson took a ten year sabbatical to finish it. Frankly, he shouldn't have bothered; the conclusion to the series, Shadowland, is an embarrassment in which Wilson hawks his New Age beliefs at the expense of decent storytelling. But that's a different book.

The Magician contains plenty of evidence of those same irrational beliefs; but it begins with a completely rational search for evidence of a murder. Our plucky hero uses his eyes and his logical thinking to search out and comprehend clues to the identities of the killers--it's CSI SpiderWorld! But before long, the hocus-pocus comes out, and we have a very bizzare scene in which our plucky hero lies naked on top of a paralyzed woman, absorbing her 'energies' through a magical mat of seaweed--I am NOT kidding. There's all sorts of magic, and scientists come in for a gentle chiding at refusing to believe in these 'alternate ways of seeing the world'. While I tire of hearing about vibrational energies and such, I have to admit that the climactic scene in The Magician, in the cave communing with the spirits of 'unliving' spiders, was very effective. I am also taken by Wilson's idea of humans and giant telepathic spiders seeking to forge a community together rather than constantly fighting, or one being subservient to the other. This book has taken the series clearly in the fantasy direction--it's no longer science fiction, if it ever really was, if those distinctions matter to you.