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lightfoxing 's review for:
The Mirror Thief
by Martin Seay
What to say about Martin Seay's The Mirror Thief? It was fascinating, infuriating, engrossing and incredibly challenging. A story in three stories, each reflections, often distorted, of the other. The Venetian, Venice Beach, and, of course, Venice itself, in the fifteen hundreds, the nineteen fifties, and the early 2000s, each set on fire by a man with a bizarre, engrossing goal with motivations that span the gamut: Curtis, in 2003, has been sent to find his father's old gambling buddy Stanley, by a friend promising a job as he puts his life back together following his retirement as a US Military Police; Stanley, in 1953, scours Venice Beach for the Adrian Welles, the author of The Mirror Thief, a book that has consumed him since he happened upon it; Crivano, in the late 1500s, has been sent to spirit a glass-maker and a silversmith from Venice in order to bring the closely-guarded mirrormaking skillsets they harbour into the hands of a sultan. The parallels between the three men, and their three Venices, are fascinating and done in a way that feels genuine and careful. Seay does not endeavour to be heavy-handed in the many ways in which mirrors feature in his novel, including in his three main characters. His prose, however, often comes across as such, with breathtaking passages frequently weighed down by description that slows down scenes that should be fast-paced, and drags down even the slow, emotional scenes that are necessary to anchor the book's action. At its core, the book is philosophical despite the action-adventure thriller that weaves throughout the three narratives. What is morality? What is one willing to do to be transported, to create an identity, to shed an identity? Is it, ultimately, justifiable? It is a book about alchemy, but not in the traditional sense (although there's just enough of even that to satisfy somebody who appreciates the details) - it is about transformation. I mean, I hope it is. It's a dense book, and what one gets out of it seems to be different from person to person.