The Last Magician by Lisa Maxwell
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
**3.5-stars**
Did I enjoy this book?
Great question.
I finished this over 10-days ago and although I remember reading it, I cannot actually recall too many specifics in regards to the plot.
From my limited recollections, there’s this girl, Esta, she lives in modern times but has the ability to time travel. She works for a mysterious Professor sort of figure who gives her an assignment to travel back to 1902-Manhattan and steal an ancient book that holds some magical secrets.
She is told that she also needs to stop the magician, who is apparently after this book as well. The magician is an actual performing magician named Harte Darrigan. They are both trying to steal the book from the mysterious and sinister ‘Order’.
This Order has worked to try to squash magic and those with it…or something. They created something called ‘the Brink’ which is a force around the island of Manhattan that traps those with magic inside…or something.
There is a lot of action, some fight scenes, some romance, a gang of magical peoples and some other things I can’t quite remember. I did listen to the audiobook for this and I am questioning whether or not that was the correct medium for me to take in this story.
It does jump around quite a bit in time, setting and perspectives, particularly in the beginning and I’ll admit, I was pretty much lost for the first 300-pages.
Overall, this didn’t leave much of an impression on me either way. There were some things about the story I like, Esta and Harte specifically, and I thought the concept behind it was super intriguing but I think it did too much to quickly. I could totally see this being broken up into two separate books.
While I am happy I read it, I am not even sure I am going to continue on with the series. I might because I already own the second book but I would seriously need a refresher course on what this is even about.
There was quite a good plot twist at the end but that left me pondering how logistically that was even possible. Then you are calculating time jumps, trying to figure how something could have actually worked. It was a lot. I give it three and a half shrugs up.
