Reviews

Carter Beats the Devil by Glen David Gold

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adamrbrooks's review

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I read this book once. I remember liking it, but it was long ago, so I can't even give it a real rating.

jacqui_des's review against another edition

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4.0

This book really has everything. It's a great read and would have been 5-stars if I hadn't taken so long to read it.

Memorable Quotes

"Starling said nothing; saying nothing often led to gold."

"Ledocq was the master of the 'It's Around Here Somewhere' school of mechanical engineering. Carter had once found a set of screwdrivers in the icebox."

"There was no feeling that deserved more to be bottled and reapplied at leisure than having recently been kissed by a pretty girl."

"In San Francisco, where misdemeanors were mostly forgiven, if not welcomed, the penalty for posting bills on the sides of buildings was a startling thirty dollars."

"When you walked a city, wherever you looked, someone had probably fallen in love there."

"His hand was pinned over his head like he was the brightest student in class."

"In his youth, Carter had believed everything was possible. Then in grief, he believed everything was impossible. And now, the very moment he stood, pulling Phoebe up with him, he felt that when you had lived enough of your life, there was no difference between the two."

"...he looked through the album and wished he could shout back to the young couple he saw, 'It will be brief, but you'll have a remarkable time together."

A Conversation I had earlier,

Friend: "So what are you reading."

Me: "Carter Beats The Devil, it's about a master magician battling a shadowy conglomerate of the government, corporations, and secret societies to find the truth about president Harding's death with the help of his pet lion."

Friend: "... There's no part of that sentence that doesn't appeal to me."

There is a word for this book and it is awesome. A big thank you to Natalie for bringing this to my attention.

cakegeek's review

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5.0

To quote my brother: "If you haven't read this by the time I next see you then you're no brother of mine..."

So, with a recommendation/threat like that, I am reading it.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Well, I guess I am getting to keep a brother because I LOVED this book. If I am honest I wasn't entirely sure what to expect from it before I started. Looking at it on the shelf when I was younger I always just chalked it up to being one of my brother magic books (he used to be a magician- so wasn't that strange a judgement). But it was definitely so much more, so much BETTER, than that.

Will be adding it to my Recommend To Others shelf

arpharrison's review

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adventurous funny lighthearted mysterious medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

ari__s's review against another edition

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5.0

This was a spectacular surprise. I love the artistic flare in the table of contents, the section breaks, and so forth - it's those little touches that truly elevate the show that Gold puts on in this book. The misdirection and magic is all there, as well as the exciting and intertwined backstories that fill this story out to its full capacity. Much like I've found it hard to find a good book about the circus (Water for Elephants being a singular exception), I've found it hard to find a good book focusing on magic shows. I certainly found a singular exception in Carter Beats the Devil.

solaana's review

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4.0

Made me kind of like Warren G. Harding.

markeefe's review

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4.0

This is a big, fun, old-fashioned novel, filled with adventure, romance, and, of course, lots of magic. I enjoyed this book a lot, despite a couple of setbacks: it goes on a bit too long, and the sentence-by-sentence writing itself is actually pretty clunky. Nonetheless, Gold did an incredible amount of research for this novel, and, for the most part, utilizes all of the details he accumulated to transform these historical figures into novelistic characters. And he's very good at building suspense. Oh, but those clunky sentences. I wish I'd known from the beginning to count the number of times he used "there were" or "there was" in order to flatten otherwise promising sentences into mere lists of props for his settings. But, then again, those dully accumulated details gather into wonderfully reconstructed homes, theaters, parks, ships, trains, and midways, all populated by fleshed-out people full of life. Once again, I wish Goodreads offered the choice of 3.5 stars. Because I was highly entertained, I'll round up to 4 stars.