Book Review: The Magic Circle
An excellent blend of science fiction and magical fantasy with romance, and LGBTQIA+ and disability representation, from Barry Ryerson.
I’ve been looking forward to reading The Magic Circle for quite a long time. The curse of being a mood reader! That being said, it still took me a while to read the book. That’s not a slight on the book at all, though. I’ve been busier than usual and I didn’t get a lot of time to read over the last couple of months. Anyway onto the review!
Blurb
Forty years ago, nuclear war devastated vast swathes of the world. Since then, the remaining countries strived to rebuild and grow stronger. Continents formed The Peace Accords, an agreement that cut all contact with each other to prevent such a war from ever happening again.
Three strangers—an art student in Paris, a Russian spy, and a South African programmer—find their lives intertwine as magic returns to Earth. Guided by the mysterious Celestials, they must choose how they use this force in a fight that will determine the fate of every single living thing on the planet.
Review
One of the first things that struck me with The Magic Circle was that it had strong Umbrella Academy vibes—A colourful group of misfits with strange magical powers, ostensibly led by a child who seems uncannily mature as well as being the voice of reason. Don’t examine that comparison too closely, though, I haven’t properly watched the show. It’s just the impression I got seeing the odd clip while my wife watched it.
Anyway, the premise for The Magic Circle was very intriguing, and I was invested right from the off. The book has multiple POVs switching between Beth, an art college student in France who discovers she can do magic, Yevgeny, a Russian magical assassin and spy working for the church, and Wikus, a dangerous South African tech genius under the influence of a malevolent entity who desires the ability to do magic above all else. Wikus is very much the main antagonist for the book, and I thought having the villain as a POV character was very well done here.
The worldbuilding here was great. I really enjoyed the interplay between sci-fi and fantasy, where the nations are rebuilding after a nuclear war that unleashed magic into the world. All the technology has a magical basis, too, and there’s a lot of scientific concepts mixed in, such as using a satellite to collect antimatter from the Van Allen radiation belts.
I really loved the characters. The cast was diverse, bombastic, well-written and their representation was treated with respect. Yevgeny was brilliant in particular; I thought his arc throughout was great and I especially liked how the ending affected him. Beth was a fun counterpoint, being thrown into a life she hadn’t expected. And the other members of the Magic Circle: Rafael, Louis, Faye, and the Twins were all very intriguing. Faye was an interesting one but I don’t think we got to see enough of her as a character. They all started out with different powers and we got to see how they developed as they learned more, which was a lot of fun. The Celestials were a great take on angelic beings—Impundulu was so unsettling. I have to say, their purpose bordered on the ridiculous, but it was all delivered so well that I had no problems lapping it all up. There was nothing to take me out of the story or break my suspension of disbelief here.
The pacing was spot-on, and the last chapters—Wow! They absolutely flew by at breakneck speed as the action came to a head. There were plenty of introspective and emotional scenes, plenty of unexpected twists and turns. I won’t spoil them here. The ending was awesome, though. Barry really knocked this out of the park.
I’d highly recommend this one for anyone craving a fun, action packed adventure that mixes science and magic in a way that absolutely sucks you in. Bravo!
