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shaykelsey_98's review
5.0
4.5 stars
Generally I really loved this book! I really loved the characters and the romance and there was a few twists at the end that I didn’t see coming. There was a lot more to it than I expected but I enjoyed every aspect.
The only reason I didn’t give it 5 was because I found the start was a bit slower for me and it took me a while to actually start getting seriously invested.
Generally I really loved this book! I really loved the characters and the romance and there was a few twists at the end that I didn’t see coming. There was a lot more to it than I expected but I enjoyed every aspect.
The only reason I didn’t give it 5 was because I found the start was a bit slower for me and it took me a while to actually start getting seriously invested.
thea's review
5.0
... but as she stepped into Dolph Saunders’ lair, Esta felt strangely at home.
THAT’S BECAUSE HE’S YOUR FATHER.
THAT’S BECAUSE HE’S YOUR FATHER.
roseduni's review
3.0
i have a lot of opinions on time travel.
(oh, and right away, a warning- if you don’t want to read a whole ton of nonsensical ramblings on time travel, don’t even bother with this entire review. i will leave a like two-line overall opinion on the book at the bottom, but otherwise...)
okay but seriously. most of my existential crisises revolve around the concept of time, and from there, time travel. (excluding the mini-crisis i just had about how to spell the word “existential”.) i also spend a lot of time psyching myself out over that concept, and that’s kinda what this book made me do (yet again).
see, i believe that if time travel were a possible thing, (like your typical sci-fi-y idea of time travel, not the time-is-relative-so-depending-where-you-are-in-the-universe-and-the-gravitational-pull-on-you-it-might-pass-by-at-different-speeds-relative-to-the-speed-it-goes-at-on-earth-think-interstellar-for-an-easier-explanation, which is a whole different concept to get stuck in.) someone traveling to the past couldn’t possibly change the future. because the past is the past is the past is the past. it can’t be edited, or changed. even if it is someone’s present, they can’t rewrite history with their actions. idk how to explain any of this, hopefully (but most likely not) you get the picture.
going in to this, though that is my preferred depiction of time travel, i didn’t particularly mind if it was represented differently by other creators.
this might have changed my mind.
i can’t even describe this properly, but i feel like esta’s time travel escapades should have had a much farther reaching scope than they did. by the end, the layers of time felt so convoluted and twisted that i feel like that entire reality would have more likely self-imploded than have reached that level of muddled mess.
of course, the vast majority of people reading this book probably didn’t feel the need to pick apart every possible outcome and ways that esta’s interference would change the future and therefore the past, but i did because i am dumb. i gave myself a migraine by the end of the book, trying to work out everything that had happened with time and everything that i believed should have happened with time.
basically what happened is that i put wayyy too much time and effort into trying to work out things that didn’t need to be worked out. and i would have had a less-headache filled time if i hadn’t done that.
but, other than that, this was HUGELY enjoyable and entertaining.
the characters? i’d die for them.
the magic system? impeccable.
THE AESTHETIC? dark and gritty and early twentieth century which is my absolute fav!!
oh it was so good. i hope i can pick up the next one soon.
so to wrap up: don’t get overly caught up in the scientific side of the time travel aspect. you’ll love it!
(also if you’re an actual scientist- i apologize for the many many many scientific and factual errors i made here. i’m literally just a seventeen year old girl with no education on any of this, and i know that i don’t know real science. so please don’t come after me.)
///
ahhh so much to say! i’m hesitating between 4 and 5 stars, so i’ll get back soon with a rating and review :)
///
i heard this pitched as renegades meets six of crows (from a dash of ash on booktube :) and if it does not deliver i will riot.
also i absolutely adore the time travel trope so i have high hopes for this one haha.
AND OH the author herself said this was kinda like magical newsies, so it feels like it was literally written for me.
(i’m really setting myself up for disaster with these high of expectations. i probably should tone them done but i kinda just can’t)
(oh, and right away, a warning- if you don’t want to read a whole ton of nonsensical ramblings on time travel, don’t even bother with this entire review. i will leave a like two-line overall opinion on the book at the bottom, but otherwise...)
okay but seriously. most of my existential crisises revolve around the concept of time, and from there, time travel. (excluding the mini-crisis i just had about how to spell the word “existential”.) i also spend a lot of time psyching myself out over that concept, and that’s kinda what this book made me do (yet again).
see, i believe that if time travel were a possible thing, (like your typical sci-fi-y idea of time travel, not the time-is-relative-so-depending-where-you-are-in-the-universe-and-the-gravitational-pull-on-you-it-might-pass-by-at-different-speeds-relative-to-the-speed-it-goes-at-on-earth-think-interstellar-for-an-easier-explanation, which is a whole different concept to get stuck in.) someone traveling to the past couldn’t possibly change the future. because the past is the past is the past is the past. it can’t be edited, or changed. even if it is someone’s present, they can’t rewrite history with their actions. idk how to explain any of this, hopefully (but most likely not) you get the picture.
going in to this, though that is my preferred depiction of time travel, i didn’t particularly mind if it was represented differently by other creators.
this might have changed my mind.
i can’t even describe this properly, but i feel like esta’s time travel escapades should have had a much farther reaching scope than they did. by the end, the layers of time felt so convoluted and twisted that i feel like that entire reality would have more likely self-imploded than have reached that level of muddled mess.
of course, the vast majority of people reading this book probably didn’t feel the need to pick apart every possible outcome and ways that esta’s interference would change the future and therefore the past, but i did because i am dumb. i gave myself a migraine by the end of the book, trying to work out everything that had happened with time and everything that i believed should have happened with time.
basically what happened is that i put wayyy too much time and effort into trying to work out things that didn’t need to be worked out. and i would have had a less-headache filled time if i hadn’t done that.
but, other than that, this was HUGELY enjoyable and entertaining.
the characters? i’d die for them.
the magic system? impeccable.
THE AESTHETIC? dark and gritty and early twentieth century which is my absolute fav!!
oh it was so good. i hope i can pick up the next one soon.
so to wrap up: don’t get overly caught up in the scientific side of the time travel aspect. you’ll love it!
(also if you’re an actual scientist- i apologize for the many many many scientific and factual errors i made here. i’m literally just a seventeen year old girl with no education on any of this, and i know that i don’t know real science. so please don’t come after me.)
///
ahhh so much to say! i’m hesitating between 4 and 5 stars, so i’ll get back soon with a rating and review :)
///
i heard this pitched as renegades meets six of crows (from a dash of ash on booktube :) and if it does not deliver i will riot.
also i absolutely adore the time travel trope so i have high hopes for this one haha.
AND OH the author herself said this was kinda like magical newsies, so it feels like it was literally written for me.
(i’m really setting myself up for disaster with these high of expectations. i probably should tone them done but i kinda just can’t)
thebookberrie's review
1.0
It me, back on my bullshit reading books I was never interested in just for reading challenge points. I'm going to try not to rant endlessly about how much I hate time travel but... god I really hate time travel.
The Last Magician takes place in a New York where magic is almost extinct. The remaining who still have an affinity for magic stay in the shadows, hiding. Manhattan is surrounded by a magical barrier called the Brink, created by the Order and any Mageus crossing it faces death. Esta is a talented thief, raised to steal magical artifacts through time. All of her training has been for a certain task: traveling to 1902 and getting a magical book before it can be destroyed and doom all of the Mageus.
First off, I do respect that some of my dislike for this book comes from just not liking certain things and that's fair. But to also be fair, I have read and enjoyed books that involved time travel before so I can't let this book slide because of that. Take my opinions with a grain of salt because for all the time travel stories I have consumed, this is somehow the most annoying and I am bitter.
This book was ridiculously confusing and even attempts at making it less confusing just ended up confusing me more. There are TONS of random POV switches for seemingly no reason at all. We would be in the POV of some guy and then we would switch to another guy in the same scene in the same room and I just didn't get why. There were also tons and tons of male characters and I got them confused for half of the book. Meanwhile there were only two female POVs, one was the MC Esta and another was a girl who barely got any. Too many dudes who barely added anything!!
Also ew did anyone ask for that romance? He just randomly kisses her out of nowhere before they even meet but don't worry, she's weirdly into a random boy kissing her in a creepy dark place as he thinks of it fondly for the rest of the book. Their teasing and flirting was so cringy too, barf.
Time travel is already a hard concept for me to grasp because it's endless loop holes and paradoxes and this book really just goes all "fuck you" about it. Things are poorly explained (if at all) and sometimes rules work and sometimes they don't, whenever the plot demands it. Ever heard of the butterfly effect? Yes but also no because random things in here change other things that weren't related at all and it makes actually zero sense. Things were never consistent and when I think about it for longer than a minute, I want to scream.
So we have time travel and then we have magical powers and these two things do not go well together at all in my opinion. It really should have been either/or, not both shoved into one confusing story. To add to that, these powers barely made any sense?? Esta has the power to jump through layers of time (aka what I call the time lasagna) but she spends most of the book either not using her powers (she's SUCH a good thief that she is amazing without them!!) or using them in ways she never mentioned before. I think her power was really just whatever the plot demanded at that moment and nothing else.
There is no reason this book needed to be 500+ pages, seriously. It was so boring and so hard to get through. If it wasn't for buddy reading and the points awaiting me at the end, I don't think I could have. The book spends SO MUCH time in the past with people talking about doing a thing and then spending forever to actually do it. The setting is so boring too and they never go anywhere. I wanted a cool National Treasure vibes adventure but with time travel and instead I got a bunch of people taking forever to do one thing in historical New York. Why is it always the same cities? So overdone and I'm tired.infinity stones magical artifacts. What was the point?
Quick shoutout to Janel for literally guessing every reveal because she had wild theories and yet that is where the author went??? I'm going to also need someone to smack a time travel book out of my hands if they ever see me with one, thanks.
The Last Magician takes place in a New York where magic is almost extinct. The remaining who still have an affinity for magic stay in the shadows, hiding. Manhattan is surrounded by a magical barrier called the Brink, created by the Order and any Mageus crossing it faces death. Esta is a talented thief, raised to steal magical artifacts through time. All of her training has been for a certain task: traveling to 1902 and getting a magical book before it can be destroyed and doom all of the Mageus.
First off, I do respect that some of my dislike for this book comes from just not liking certain things and that's fair. But to also be fair, I have read and enjoyed books that involved time travel before so I can't let this book slide because of that. Take my opinions with a grain of salt because for all the time travel stories I have consumed, this is somehow the most annoying and I am bitter.
This book was ridiculously confusing and even attempts at making it less confusing just ended up confusing me more. There are TONS of random POV switches for seemingly no reason at all. We would be in the POV of some guy and then we would switch to another guy in the same scene in the same room and I just didn't get why. There were also tons and tons of male characters and I got them confused for half of the book. Meanwhile there were only two female POVs, one was the MC Esta and another was a girl who barely got any. Too many dudes who barely added anything!!
Also ew did anyone ask for that romance? He just randomly kisses her out of nowhere before they even meet but don't worry, she's weirdly into a random boy kissing her in a creepy dark place as he thinks of it fondly for the rest of the book. Their teasing and flirting was so cringy too, barf.
Time travel is already a hard concept for me to grasp because it's endless loop holes and paradoxes and this book really just goes all "fuck you" about it. Things are poorly explained (if at all) and sometimes rules work and sometimes they don't, whenever the plot demands it. Ever heard of the butterfly effect? Yes but also no because random things in here change other things that weren't related at all and it makes actually zero sense. Things were never consistent and when I think about it for longer than a minute, I want to scream.
So we have time travel and then we have magical powers and these two things do not go well together at all in my opinion. It really should have been either/or, not both shoved into one confusing story. To add to that, these powers barely made any sense?? Esta has the power to jump through layers of time (aka what I call the time lasagna) but she spends most of the book either not using her powers (she's SUCH a good thief that she is amazing without them!!) or using them in ways she never mentioned before. I think her power was really just whatever the plot demanded at that moment and nothing else.
There is no reason this book needed to be 500+ pages, seriously. It was so boring and so hard to get through. If it wasn't for buddy reading and the points awaiting me at the end, I don't think I could have. The book spends SO MUCH time in the past with people talking about doing a thing and then spending forever to actually do it. The setting is so boring too and they never go anywhere. I wanted a cool National Treasure vibes adventure but with time travel and instead I got a bunch of people taking forever to do one thing in historical New York. Why is it always the same cities? So overdone and I'm tired.
Spoiler
To add to my annoyance, at the end they end up exactly where they were at the beginning but now they have the extra step of collecting theQuick shoutout to Janel for literally guessing every reveal because she had wild theories and yet that is where the author went??? I'm going to also need someone to smack a time travel book out of my hands if they ever see me with one, thanks.
aveldlay's review against another edition
4.0
Gdybym miała jakoś zareklamować tę książkę to powiedziałabym coś w stylu "Szóstka wron spotyka Trylogię czasu". Bo "Ostatni mag" stanowi niejako połączenie konceptów z tych dwóch serii. Cały motyw z podróżami w czasie i misją zmieniania przyszłości przez zmianę przeszłości bardzo kojarzył mi się z pomysłem Kerstin Gier, a Esta przywodziła mi na myśl Gwen, tylko taką trochę bardziej rozgarniętą i dojrzalszą. No a Dolph, jego gang i te wszystkie przekręty i intrygi, które się z nim wiążą, to z kolei ewidentna inspiracja pomysłem Bardugo.
Nie powiedziałabym jednak, że Maxwell kogoś tu kopiuje. Raczej tylko korzysta z pewnych motywów utartych przez powyższe serie ale jednocześnie "stoi na własnych nogach" i wytycza własne ścieżki.
Mamy tu dość ciekawy świat, wybijający się głównie przez intrygujący model magii i to, jak ta magia jest odbierana przez różne osoby.
Podoba mi się też, ze autorka włożyła wysiłek w wykreowanie bohaterów - tutaj każdy z nich ma swoją przeszłość, poglądy oraz priorytety, do których dąży za wszelką cenę. Zwłaszcza to ostatnie podoba mi się w tym najbardziej. Bo pewne postacie mogą darzyć się większą albo mniejszą sympatią, ale jednocześnie jest nam wyraźnie dawane przy tym do zrozumienia, że są to ludzie bezwzględni, którzy potrafią rzucić innym kłody pod nogi, jeśli uznają to za konieczne. Dzięki temu nikt tu nie jest do końca "czysty" i pewny, a to buduje niezły klimat.
Wątek miłosny jest... ok? Trudno w sumie orzec, bo jest dość pogmatwany. To takie trochę "hate to love" z tą różnicą, że przy tym "hate" bohaterów ewidentnie do siebie ciągnie, a to "love" w sumie też jest w tym przypadku takie trochę na wyrost. No mówię - pogmatwane trochę. Ale przy tym wszystkim ten wątek jest całkiem subtelny, powolny i raczej nie przysłania "esencji" fabuły. Ja osobiście nie jestem ani fanką ani przeciwniczką tej relacji, ale wydaje mi się, że ten duet zyska spore grono fanów.
Jeżeli miałabym się do czegoś przyczepić, to ewentualnie do dynamiki. Żeby nie było - to nie jest historia bazująca na pościgach i wybuchach. Tutaj pierwsze skrzypce grają intrygi, podstępy, planowanie. I to działa tylko... wydaje mi się, że gdyby gdzieś tak w środku pojawiło się kilka zwrotów akcji, to to by wyszło tej powieści na korzyść. Bo w pewnym momencie czekamy tylko na TEN moment i wtedy tempo akcji nieco siada, a nie powinno. Mam też mieszane uczucia co do końcówki, ale może drugi tom coś w tej materii jeszcze zmieni.
Generalnie raczej polecam, w szczególności miłośnikom "Szóstki wron", "Trylogii czasu" i takich historii z przekrętami, bo to jest coś w tym stylu, a jednocześnie nie całkiem to samo, więc... może u was kliknąć ;)
Nie powiedziałabym jednak, że Maxwell kogoś tu kopiuje. Raczej tylko korzysta z pewnych motywów utartych przez powyższe serie ale jednocześnie "stoi na własnych nogach" i wytycza własne ścieżki.
Mamy tu dość ciekawy świat, wybijający się głównie przez intrygujący model magii i to, jak ta magia jest odbierana przez różne osoby.
Podoba mi się też, ze autorka włożyła wysiłek w wykreowanie bohaterów - tutaj każdy z nich ma swoją przeszłość, poglądy oraz priorytety, do których dąży za wszelką cenę. Zwłaszcza to ostatnie podoba mi się w tym najbardziej. Bo pewne postacie mogą darzyć się większą albo mniejszą sympatią, ale jednocześnie jest nam wyraźnie dawane przy tym do zrozumienia, że są to ludzie bezwzględni, którzy potrafią rzucić innym kłody pod nogi, jeśli uznają to za konieczne. Dzięki temu nikt tu nie jest do końca "czysty" i pewny, a to buduje niezły klimat.
Wątek miłosny jest... ok? Trudno w sumie orzec, bo jest dość pogmatwany. To takie trochę "hate to love" z tą różnicą, że przy tym "hate" bohaterów ewidentnie do siebie ciągnie, a to "love" w sumie też jest w tym przypadku takie trochę na wyrost. No mówię - pogmatwane trochę. Ale przy tym wszystkim ten wątek jest całkiem subtelny, powolny i raczej nie przysłania "esencji" fabuły. Ja osobiście nie jestem ani fanką ani przeciwniczką tej relacji, ale wydaje mi się, że ten duet zyska spore grono fanów.
Jeżeli miałabym się do czegoś przyczepić, to ewentualnie do dynamiki. Żeby nie było - to nie jest historia bazująca na pościgach i wybuchach. Tutaj pierwsze skrzypce grają intrygi, podstępy, planowanie. I to działa tylko... wydaje mi się, że gdyby gdzieś tak w środku pojawiło się kilka zwrotów akcji, to to by wyszło tej powieści na korzyść. Bo w pewnym momencie czekamy tylko na TEN moment i wtedy tempo akcji nieco siada, a nie powinno. Mam też mieszane uczucia co do końcówki, ale może drugi tom coś w tej materii jeszcze zmieni.
Generalnie raczej polecam, w szczególności miłośnikom "Szóstki wron", "Trylogii czasu" i takich historii z przekrętami, bo to jest coś w tym stylu, a jednocześnie nie całkiem to samo, więc... może u was kliknąć ;)
ncvaldivieso's review
adventurous
informative
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
3.5
maliactuallyreads's review
adventurous
mysterious
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? N/A
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
2.0
liinukka's review
5.0
Okay, it took a while to really get going, but it finally got really exciting about half way through. Up until that point, there were too many characters, POVs, storylines to really make it cohesive. I couldn't put the book down in the last quarter of it. Loved the twists and turns in the plot. Looking forward to reading the next one!
dalinarsreads's review
5.0
Ok this was unexpected. I had this book a few years ago, then unhauled it thinking I’d never read it because I read like 20 pages and was like ‘meh’ but I gave it a second chance, an this book was everything?????? I had so many guesses for how it would end, and every single one of them were wrong.