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dubikan 's review for:
The Mirror Thief
by Martin Seay
When all and said is done, this is a good book. But you have to struggle through some really poor book to get the good one.
The book is composed of three strands, in three different eras - the early 2000's, the mid 20th century (both in the US), and renaissance Italy. I'll admit that I didn't actually understand the ending, or how the three strands inform one another beyond the very obvious parts, so I may have missed some key points. But mostly, the three are perfectly independent, and I'm not sure you'd lose anything if you read only the sections of one strand without the intervening sections from the others. In the early 2000's, a former soldier is sent on a mission to locate an old family friend in Las Vegas, to help his friend. That family friend is a professional gambler, and Curtis, the former soldier, becomes immersed in the world of professional gambling to try and find him. In the 1950's, Stanley Green (the family friend) is in California, trying to find the author of a book of poems called The Mirror Thief, which he picked up from some burglar's stuff in New-York. Stanley became obsessed with the book, the only one he ever read, believing it has a key to some... something. The book tells of a doctor Crivano in 16th century Italy, the eponymous mirror thief.
The third strand of the book follows the true events in the life of dottore Vettor Crivano as he engages in a conspiracy to transport people with the protected knowledge of mirror making to the Turkish sultan.
Here's my main beef with the book: the author clearly did HEAPS of research. Each era is vividly described. But each strand also opens in an incredibly long segment where the author merely regurgitates all the research in pages upon pages of descriptions full of words neither I not my Kindle's dictionary could decipher. An author should definitely do his research when writing a book, especially about a historical period, but the reader can't be expected to do that research themselves as well. I can't look up every architectural reference, every obsolete clothing article, every arcane acronym. Maybe he was hoping to just set a mood, rather than give a useful description. That could be valid. But in that case, the "mood setting" words have to be sprinkled individually among other words that can be comprehensible, not condensed in a blob of meaninglessness at the beginning of every strand.
The fact that the book also starts off with a bewildering segment that was probably intended to be mysterious but ends up just being frustrating, leads me to think that this 600 page book could have been significantly shorter, and better for it.
Once you get through that annoying bit, though, each strand is beautifully and vividly told, and I believe worth the struggle with the problematic part. Even though, like I said, I didn't quite understand how the three strands converge in the ending. Without revealing too much, the ending is somewhat of a deus ex machina. Or a machina ex deux, maybe...
Still, worth the read. Don't feel bad about skipping pages that seem pointless.
The book is composed of three strands, in three different eras - the early 2000's, the mid 20th century (both in the US), and renaissance Italy. I'll admit that I didn't actually understand the ending, or how the three strands inform one another beyond the very obvious parts, so I may have missed some key points. But mostly, the three are perfectly independent, and I'm not sure you'd lose anything if you read only the sections of one strand without the intervening sections from the others. In the early 2000's, a former soldier is sent on a mission to locate an old family friend in Las Vegas, to help his friend. That family friend is a professional gambler, and Curtis, the former soldier, becomes immersed in the world of professional gambling to try and find him. In the 1950's, Stanley Green (the family friend) is in California, trying to find the author of a book of poems called The Mirror Thief, which he picked up from some burglar's stuff in New-York. Stanley became obsessed with the book, the only one he ever read, believing it has a key to some... something. The book tells of a doctor Crivano in 16th century Italy, the eponymous mirror thief.
The third strand of the book follows the true events in the life of dottore Vettor Crivano as he engages in a conspiracy to transport people with the protected knowledge of mirror making to the Turkish sultan.
Here's my main beef with the book: the author clearly did HEAPS of research. Each era is vividly described. But each strand also opens in an incredibly long segment where the author merely regurgitates all the research in pages upon pages of descriptions full of words neither I not my Kindle's dictionary could decipher. An author should definitely do his research when writing a book, especially about a historical period, but the reader can't be expected to do that research themselves as well. I can't look up every architectural reference, every obsolete clothing article, every arcane acronym. Maybe he was hoping to just set a mood, rather than give a useful description. That could be valid. But in that case, the "mood setting" words have to be sprinkled individually among other words that can be comprehensible, not condensed in a blob of meaninglessness at the beginning of every strand.
The fact that the book also starts off with a bewildering segment that was probably intended to be mysterious but ends up just being frustrating, leads me to think that this 600 page book could have been significantly shorter, and better for it.
Once you get through that annoying bit, though, each strand is beautifully and vividly told, and I believe worth the struggle with the problematic part. Even though, like I said, I didn't quite understand how the three strands converge in the ending. Without revealing too much, the ending is somewhat of a deus ex machina. Or a machina ex deux, maybe...
Still, worth the read. Don't feel bad about skipping pages that seem pointless.