This is a very well written and interesting read. I loved how the chapters switched back and forth. The characters were well developed and likable. Again I highly recommend this book.

I started this one with high hopes. I could see from early on that it had been written designed to appeal to fans of The Night Circus - it mingles the theatrical perfumed with whiffs of the supernatural. Still, while I enjoyed The Night Circus, it irritates me how many books have been written attempting to emulate its success. It makes sense to tap the market but you still have a feeling of a room full of publishers sitting around going, "That was incredibly successful, let's get another one of that," rather than an author being inspired and so choosing to write a book. Still, I have enjoyed several of The Night Circus' followers, most particularly The Illusionists and so came to this one with an open mind.


Macallister's novel begins with the magician describing her preparations for her routine in detail, the intensity of the performance and then she steps on to the stage. Watching her from the audience is Virgil Holt, kindly lawman with problems of his own. Later he hears that the Amazing Arden's husband has been found dead, that she is presumed to have killed him and when he spots her again, he feels obliged to detain her. Shackling Arden to the chair with not one, not two but three handcuffs, the two of them strike up an intense two-handed conversation as she tries to convince him of her innocence and to set her free.

The exchanges between Arden and Virgil were the most effective parts of the novel; tense, compelling, neither of them at all sure of the other. Virgil says so little and yet we see so much - he is the man who has always measured himself against his friend Mose and always came up short. Second choice in his wife's eyes, unable to give her the child she craves and now he has a bigger problem and no way of solving it. From our first glimpse of Arden as she readied herself for the stage, we know that she as unlike him as it is possible to be. Her words weave around him and we know that he will not stand a chance. The telephone may ring, a knock may sound at the door - Virgil is like Coleridge's Wedding Guest, he must hear the whole story.

The problem with Arden's story is not that Macallister cannot drum up a decent mystery - it is her failure to gather it back together again. There is plenty of potential; Arden is the misbegotten love-child of a talented cellist and grows up in her grandparents' wealthy home before being suddenly snatched away when her mother elopes. There are suggestions of eerie events afoot - for some strange reason there is a family tradition of dying the women's hair which is never explained, nor is the provenance of Arden's biological father or indeed whatever became of her mother after they parted ways. Macallister abandons so many threads that seem promising but then stirs in a supernatural thread which she never seems to know what to do with. It was interesting to note in the afterword that there had been multiple drafts and that some of them had not included this element - this book did not have a finished feel and I think a few more drafts would have helped.

Macallister has certainly got talent - she created a wonderful villain, a charismatic heroine and in Virgil we have an underdog for whom I really wanted to things to work but these gifts feel squandered in this book which feels bungled and forgettable. With such a promising opening, I was expecting a kind of The Usual Suspects scenario - there was such suspicion on Arden and with a title like The Magician's Lie, I hoped for a resolution that was not quite so predictable. The story spun stretched out in very straight lines and Virgil looked very under-used. This is not 'the new Night Circus', it is not even the new Illusionists, it is but a pale copy and is no more than briefly enjoyable.