Rating: Summary: What a God-awful mess! Review: I loved "The Eight." I didn't finish this book. I simply cannot believe the same person wrote both books. One is great. One is a huge mess! Don't waste your time....forget "The Magic Circle." Re-read "The Eight" and enjoy storytelling at its zenith!
Rating: Summary: Drowning in a sea of words Review: I could not finish this book. I found myself bogged down by complex family trees, overly long descriptive passages, and too often pure boredom. At times I found myself considering note cards to keep the characters and their relationships straight. This is the first novel (by this author) that I have read, it may be the last.
Rating: Summary: Not up to the standards set by "The Eight" Review: "The Eight" was one of the very best books I had ever read-I recommended it to more people who also loved it. So when I got "The Magic Circle" I was so excited--for about five minutes! This book was a complete waste of time--and I did finish it, though it was a job not a joy. The past was too detailed and confusing, the historical characters did not keep my interest like the ones in "The Eight"-I kept skimming over these areas to get back to the present. This side of the story was better.
Rating: Summary: Interesting, yet confusing Review: As a huge fan of The Eight, I immediately grabbed this book when I read about it in the inside cover of the jacket. I raced through it in hopes that it would be just as wonderful as The Eight. It wasn't. Having just read some of the feedback from Thewest and Reneofc, I must agree with most of their comments. While it kept my attention, I was very frustrated throughout the story. About two-thirds the way through, I was close to graphing out a family tree for Ariel, because I couldn't keep her family intermarriages straight. And as I neared the final 75 pages in the book, I was sure that she wouldn't wrap it up to my satisfaction. The ending felt like it just fell off a cliff. She summed up all of those myths and names in a brief few pages and even the romance part crashed. I was rooting for Sam and Ariel to end up together (man, was I sick of Wolfgang!) but that too felt insufficient. I am not a history buff and so I was unable to determine how much of the story was based on reality. Unlike Thewest and Reneofc, however, I wasn't expecting reality. I figured that the author was taking one nugget of "fact" and extrapolating from there. Based on those other reviews, I suppose I was correct. If nothing else, however, Ms. Neville has sparked my interest in history. I plan to research a number of those "nuggets" and for that I believe the book was worth the reading.
Rating: Summary: Reader unable to distinguish between fact and fantasy. Review: I read the above review by thewest@earthnet and with his/her encouragement feel relieved to review Katherine Neville's book 'The Magic Circle' despite the amazing blaze of feelings the read has conjured. I admit to having pretty much the same impression as 'thewest'. I was stunned (at first) by the amount of information this author was pulling together from such varied sources. As I neared page 500, I realized that no matter how complicated the intertwinings of the narrator's family relations (Ugh, in my opinion-was all that incest meant to be farcical?) were, the author was never, never, never going to pull the whole thing together in time to satisfy all the questions her 'sitings' had churned up. I thought her ending where Sam and Ariel (two cousins-isn't that supposedly illegal?) discuss their revelations regarding the mysterious rune manuscripts was utter balderdash. As a woman, I was disturbed and insulted that Neville thinks the secret to life's mysteries lies in a simple 'positioning'. In 'Thenet's words, 'Give me a break!' I just assumed Neville didn't really have an ending to the story or after 500 pages her editor told her to cut the chaff-the book really should have gone on for another 500 pages to fully satisfy the reader. Are we to assume that Jesus and Miriam, his only true initiate, had assumed the proper positions and hence Miriam's mystical understanding? The conclusion of the book is an example of Occam's razor in its worst application. Trite BS. I am not a historian and I don't claim to know anything about what I read about in 'The Magic Circle'. However, one good thing came from this read, I was very much taken with my own lack of knowledge regarding other cultures, but I am not sure that the things that interested me in the book are based on fact and that scares me. People reading this book will automatically assume that what they read is some semblance of reality. But which is true and which is fiction? Neville should have at least had an afterward explaining where she got her valid material. I suppose that since one did not exist, the entire book was based on fantasy and was an attempt to recaptivate her 'The Eight'audience. Can any historians tell me which parts of the story were based on fact? I've read Marion Zimmer Bradley's series on Avalon and Pauline Gedge's saga which touch on the same time period-the Roman annihilation of the druid's isle
of Mona. I feel that it was handled in these books in a more factual way, but now, I am perplexed wondering what I should believe. Yes, fiction is fiction, but even historians infer things by certain events. Historical fiction always seemed to have tha ability to bring a dryer read to life. (A silly but honest statement that doesn't speak much for my education!.
Rating: Summary: Highly disappointing compared to The Eight Review: I was a big fan of The Eight, so I ordered The Magic Circle as soon as I saw it. I wish I hadn't. Unlike her last novel, A Calculated Risk, which was set in the world of high finance, this book goes back to the style of the Eight. Historical accounts from various periods are interspersed with the modern day trials and tribulations of Ariel, the protaganist. Unlike Cat, the main character from The Eight, I found Ariel a frustrating character to root for, as she was constantly doing things that made no sense to me, and shouldn't have to her either. After a while, I wanted to knock on her head and ask if anyone was home. Her family is worse. It's endlessly evolving as revelations of incest and falsified parenthood are dropped on her one after another. After a while it was pointless to even try and keep track. Unfortunately, the weaving of myriad threads from different periods of history that the author accomplished so well in The Eight seems badly strained here, and it seems that no city they visit can even be named without a two page digression into the history of the town and how it's name mystically ties in with the hidden knowledge of the ancients. After a while, it just gets repetitive, and I kept waiting for something important to finally take place. And despite implications of artifacts of great power from ealier ages, and the sweeping changes that are to accompany the turning aeons, nothing really happens. Honestly, if you're new to this author, and this book sounds interesting to you, I'd go back and read The Eight instead.
Rating: Summary: THIS IS A BRILLIANT BOOK BUT IS IT A GOOD BOOK? Review: As an Historian, as a lover of mysteries, as a devoted fan of Katherine Neville, as a reader and reviewer who extolled "The Eight" and consider it one of my favorite novels, I eagerly snatched up the book the day it came into the bookstore. Yet, it troubled me as I read it, seriously troubled me as I re-read it, and now troubles and DISAPPOINTS me and DISTURBS me. I suppose I even feel sad. I was bedazzled initially by the range of knowledge, by the chronological span of histories - only to realize as I moved through it that this brilliant array of superficiality was LIGHT indeed. Yet the writing of the historical sections and also the non-historical is clever enough to hide at first the lack of depth, and arranged in such a manner as to give the impression that the histories and subject discussions are factual and real. At first, I discounted her insistence upon factual impressions of historical rumors. "After all," I thought, "this is fiction." Then I started counting and came away disturbed. Neville takes a series of rumors, uncertainties, guesses in several "histories" of the world and makes them fact. Endlessly. When historians are unclear, for example, about how or why someone dies - killed or suicide - or by whom, she distorts. Wherever a rumor exists, she makes it a truth - even it does not add to the story. Where it is an historical question, she says it is reality - even when it does not matter. Repeatedly. A list of 30 such certainties or conclusions come to mind off the top of my head. "Oh well," one counters, "its only fiction." Yet she treads too often on a dangerous line. And she gives it all the appearance of fact. I enjoy historical novels. And the ones who do them well are superb writers and researchers who do extensive research and note the bases. They play joyously with facts and ideas and rumors and imagination - and their readers know they are doing just that. Seldom do they say, "historians believe," and follow that statement with an outright fantasy. For example, "historians believe he [Alexander] left nothing but his golden legend." Although many historians quarrel about Alexander, I know of no one who believes that. And who would any longer conclude that "history is a record of the conquerors' stupendous deeds of valor." What old musty books has she been reading? My colleagues who are grounded in the Celtic or Native American cultures also tell me they are horrified with the seeming knowledge Neville portrays that is so "distortive." I am left with the lingering suspicion that Neville read one book on each of the subjects with which she deals in "depth" and then decided to let her mind wander. I am not horrified, just disappointed. Perhaps she explained her own subconscious dilemma best when her character mused, "I felt like a player in a millennial scavenger hunt, chasing scattered clues across continents and through aeons." If brilliance is defined as "an awesome range of acquaintance with a variety of related and sometimes unrelated concepts, ideas, subjects, connected with interesting bridges of fantasy," then Neville's book is brilliant. Think about it! Here is a self-proclaimed expert on the Bible, the Torah, Greek history, Roman History, Ancient Civilization, the Gauls and the Celts, nuclear science, ancient mysteries and mythology, astrology, astronomy, Medieval times, religion through the ages, Nazi Germany, the Holocaust, geography, the lives of the Saints, the history of South Africa, the beliefs and ritual of Native Americans, and so on. GOSH. It is dazzling - at first. I must say that I thoroughly enjoyed her true descriptions of Idaho, Sun Valley, the Kootenai Wilderness, the Snake River, and the places both her characters and I have skied, hiked, camped, felt peace and awe. Her "driving in a blizzard" scene is wonderfully exact - and brings back many a memory. And of course I am fond of her description of a drive I make every day - through Marin, over the Golden Gate, by the Presidio. I cannot imagine, though, that she has ever been in Leningrad given the lifeless and inconsequential descriptions of that fascinating city and its environs. Nor does it appear that she has spent much quality time in either Paris or Vienna. What about the "fiction" segments? Think about it. Tantalizing, perhaps. But "depthy" or thoughtful or even intriguing to the end? I think not. Setting aside the dazzlement, how coherent or consistent is the story? Is it not simply confusing. I wonder how many months, years it took Neville to write this book. I wonder because the ending gives the impression that the author got very tired and ran out of ideas, out of energy. The Publisher's Editor seems to have run out of the courage to require another rewrite - hoping realistically, I suspect, that all of Neville's followers from "The Eight" would rush to buy it, knowing that it is the buying of it that places it on the Best Seller List, not the finishing of it or the liking of it. I am sad because of the distortions and the superficiality and the lack of professional intrigue and the "chasing of scattered clues" that one would not see in a Margaret George, an Anne Perry, a Caleb Carr, or a Maron, Greenleaf, Gilman, Barnes, Reich, Kellerman, Nance, Grisham, George, McCrumb, Grafton, Muller, Patterson, et.al. I suppose one could credit Neville with being a feminist because Sam sums it all up (thank God - finally) in the last two pages by concluding that the main question is: "What does a woman want?" And that the woman as well as Mother Earth should end up on top - both metaphorically and in bed. Give me a break.
Rating: Summary: A fascinating adventure, over 2000 years Review: 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.
Rating: Summary: Tesla, Jesus, Alexander the Great, and "Lucky" Heidler too! Review: It has been much too long since this writer has read a novel that truly "was too good to put down". Neville is unrelenting in her pacing as the story moves gracefully between the early Christian era and just a few years ago. Ariel Behn is an amazing and amazingly real contemporary woman, grandly realized as are most of Neville's other characters, even the cameos from the likes of Nicola Tesla (one of the 20th Century's most intriguing men!), Jesus and his crew (most excellent portrayal of Mary Magdalene), and "Lucky" Heidler, later Hitler. There's everything in this big expansive novel from nuclear science to alchemical marriage and Native American totemism. Neville is also most appropriately discreet in her boudoir scenes in this age of explicitity and kinkiness, which for this reader, is most appreciated. If only she hadn't rushed the ending. Another 75-100 pages, while not overly increasing the "tome-iness" of an already large book, would likely have given time for a more satisfying conclusion. Or maybe there'll be a sequel. I'd love it. Don't believe the negative comments you may see about this book. If you enjoy a grand read that keeps you reading, this is not to be missed. A perfect October kind of book!
Rating: Summary: Avoid this one Review: 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.
|