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3.89 AVERAGE
3.89 AVERAGE
challenging
dark
emotional
sad
tense
medium-paced
When Jamie, his brother Dennis, and his friends Mia and Clay were preteens, they befriended a strange one-eyed magician living in the woods on the edge of an abandoned and collapsing mine called Black Mouth. The man taught them tricks, but eventually coerced them into darker actions. As an adult, Jamie is an alcoholic struggling with the guilt of his past. He reluctantly returns home after his mother's death just as the one eyed magician appears to resurface elsewhere still preying on lonely impressionable children. He and Dennis reunite with Mia and Clay to see if this time they can stop him.
Malfi's coming of age horror novel has definite IT vibes, but also manages to become its own thing. You really feel for these characters and their past trauma, especially Jamie, who has a sweet bond with his disabled younger brother. There are some disturbing moments, including a brief part with a dog that is really hard to read and I could have done without. I didn’t love where the last 50 pages went, but overall a very good read.
Malfi's coming of age horror novel has definite IT vibes, but also manages to become its own thing. You really feel for these characters and their past trauma, especially Jamie, who has a sweet bond with his disabled younger brother. There are some disturbing moments, including a brief part with a dog that is really hard to read and I could have done without. I didn’t love where the last 50 pages went, but overall a very good read.
dark
mysterious
sad
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
adventurous
mysterious
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
No
There's a lot of Stephen King in this book--which isn't necessarily a criticism because it'd be hard to be a horror writer in the 21st century and not have a little King in you--but I think Malfi adds enough of his own style to be distinct. I'm interested in reading some of his other books but despite my high rating, this book didn't entirely work for me. It was very readable and some of the moments with the Magic Man were truly chilling but I just didn't find the characters that compelling. If you love King's It or you're a big fan of spooky characters doing spooky things around kids, this will probably hit though.
challenging
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
dark
emotional
mysterious
sad
tense
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
dark
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
This was definitely a quick but enjoyable read...not normally a book that I would necessarily have picked up, but someone at work lent it to me and I ended up starting and finishing it within a few days.
tl;dr When Jamie and his friends were kids, they were influenced/coerced by a man known as The Magician down a path that led to the death of a woman and child. Now, twenty years later, he and his friends have come back together to look for this man after a chance sighting that has them questioning whether this man is truly a magical and immortal being.
There is so much more happening in this book beyond that very short summary. On the outset, it seems like this book is about dark magic and horror, and I'm not saying that it is not, but what it really is about at its core is childhood trauma, the effects of trauma, and the importance of getting closure.
(Also before I forget, HUGE TW for animal cruelty. It was quite graphic (imo) and if I had known this would be a scene in the book, I probably would have skipped over reading it entirely. It was so fucking upsetting...even though a few chapters later, a woman and baby dies and I was like eh LOL. LEAVE THE DOG ALONE!!!)
Anyway, I read this book from the lens of a trauma-informed psychologist (because of course I did!) which honestly made the magical bits even more interesting, because I saw all of that as allegory for the trauma that the main characters suffered - not just from being groomed by the Magician, but from their various personal history traumas (child abuse, bullying/racism, and parental death, respectively). And then, of course, the Magician picking the most vulnerable children in the community to groom was another trauma in and of itself.
I also saw the different ways that people deal with trauma after the event is all finished in the way the three main characters' lives diverged after everything that happened when they were kids. Jamie fell into drinking and generally maladaptive ways to handle everything that happened, Mia sublimated by putting it into her films and such that she made, and Clay transformed it by becoming a social worker and helping other kids in terrible situations. Overall, while there was a plot that drove the book, I found the character study aspect of it the most interesting of all. A quote that really fits well with this book is hurt people hurt people, and that was so true of both Jamie and the main antagonist(s), but we also see how other people were able to escape that fate and take other paths (aka his friends, Mia and Clay).
A fascinating point towards the end of the book asks if the confrontation between Jamie and the Magician (along with Jamie's brother, of course) in the weird Upside Down-esq creepy world was real, or if it was a weird fever dream or something along those lines. In this confrontation, Jamie is finally able to face, if not his father, who was the original source of his trauma, the man who took advantage of three vulnerable children and who knows how many more before and after them. Here, in this fantastical fever dream world, Jamie meets him on even ground rather than with the unbalanced power dynamic that existed when Jamie was a child, and he fights to reclaim the power that the Magician took from him.
So I don't think it matters what the answer is to the questions about whether it was real. (Note: I do think it was "real," or as real as it can be within this setting aka that Jamie did end up in a creepy dark fantasy world and fought the Magician, but I love the allegory about facing trauma too.) In the end, this was a book about facing one's trauma, not letting it consume you, moving forward, and growing from everything that happened. I would recommend this book to people who like magical horror, reading about trauma and the way characters might deal with it, and people who enjoy Stephen King's world, which this is very akin to in some ways.
tl;dr When Jamie and his friends were kids, they were influenced/coerced by a man known as The Magician down a path that led to the death of a woman and child. Now, twenty years later, he and his friends have come back together to look for this man after a chance sighting that has them questioning whether this man is truly a magical and immortal being.
There is so much more happening in this book beyond that very short summary. On the outset, it seems like this book is about dark magic and horror, and I'm not saying that it is not, but what it really is about at its core is childhood trauma, the effects of trauma, and the importance of getting closure.
(Also before I forget, HUGE TW for animal cruelty. It was quite graphic (imo) and if I had known this would be a scene in the book, I probably would have skipped over reading it entirely. It was so fucking upsetting...even though a few chapters later, a woman and baby dies and I was like eh LOL. LEAVE THE DOG ALONE!!!)
Anyway, I read this book from the lens of a trauma-informed psychologist (because of course I did!) which honestly made the magical bits even more interesting, because I saw all of that as allegory for the trauma that the main characters suffered - not just from being groomed by the Magician, but from their various personal history traumas (child abuse, bullying/racism, and parental death, respectively). And then, of course, the Magician picking the most vulnerable children in the community to groom was another trauma in and of itself.
I also saw the different ways that people deal with trauma after the event is all finished in the way the three main characters' lives diverged after everything that happened when they were kids. Jamie fell into drinking and generally maladaptive ways to handle everything that happened, Mia sublimated by putting it into her films and such that she made, and Clay transformed it by becoming a social worker and helping other kids in terrible situations. Overall, while there was a plot that drove the book, I found the character study aspect of it the most interesting of all. A quote that really fits well with this book is hurt people hurt people, and that was so true of both Jamie and the main antagonist(s), but we also see how other people were able to escape that fate and take other paths (aka his friends, Mia and Clay).
A fascinating point towards the end of the book asks if the confrontation between Jamie and the Magician (along with Jamie's brother, of course) in the weird Upside Down-esq creepy world was real, or if it was a weird fever dream or something along those lines. In this confrontation, Jamie is finally able to face, if not his father, who was the original source of his trauma, the man who took advantage of three vulnerable children and who knows how many more before and after them. Here, in this fantastical fever dream world, Jamie meets him on even ground rather than with the unbalanced power dynamic that existed when Jamie was a child, and he fights to reclaim the power that the Magician took from him.
So I don't think it matters what the answer is to the questions about whether it was real. (Note: I do think it was "real," or as real as it can be within this setting aka that Jamie did end up in a creepy dark fantasy world and fought the Magician, but I love the allegory about facing trauma too.) In the end, this was a book about facing one's trauma, not letting it consume you, moving forward, and growing from everything that happened. I would recommend this book to people who like magical horror, reading about trauma and the way characters might deal with it, and people who enjoy Stephen King's world, which this is very akin to in some ways.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Addiction, Alcoholism, Animal cruelty, Child abuse, Child death, Physical abuse
Moderate: Death of parent, Schizophrenia/Psychosis
dark
emotional
mysterious
sad
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
reflective
sad
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
adventurous
dark
emotional
reflective
sad
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes