The Glass Magician

New York 1905—The Vanderbilts. The Astors. The Morgans. They are the cream of society—and they own the nation on the cusp of a new century.

Thalia Cutler doesn’t have any of those family connections. What she does know is stage magic and she dazzles audiences with an act that takes your breath away.

That is, until one night when a trick goes horribly awry. In surviving she discovers that she can shapeshift, and has the potential to take her place among the rich and powerful.

But first, she’ll have to learn to control that power…before the real monsters descend to feast.

I received this book for free from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

Normally I am not a fan of paranormal fiction, but this book hit two buttons for me.  I am a fan of turn of the century (I guess I have to specify the turn of the 20^th century now) fiction, and I love stage magic.  The Glass Magician is not a bad book; it came close to being excellent.  Sadly, there are a few places the story let me down.

The characters are probably the best part of the book, or at least one character is.  Thalia Cutler, the eponymous magician, is a fairly likable main character.  She is strong-willed and competent while still exhibiting flaws and worries enough to be interesting.  Stevermer hit a good balance with Cutler, making me care about what happened to her through the story, which is one of the most important parts of an engaging novel.  Thalia also has a decent character arc through the novel, developing enough to make the journey feel like it had a real impact on her.

The rest of the characters were not as well fleshed out, which is something of a disappointment.  Except for a few of the major supporting cast, most of the people Thalia meets throughout the story are just cardboard cutouts, easily identified by their position in the story and left at that, with no fleshing out or unique personalities.

The plot itself is fine, if not amazing.  The mystery is fine if the conclusion a bit of a letdown.  The romance is fine, if not completely compelling.  I did not dislike the way the story unfolded; it just did not end up going anywhere interesting enough to make it a highlight of the book

The real issue this book suffers from is in its world-building.  While I have some small issue with the way different groups are sorted, my main issue with the world-building isn’t in its structure, but how it’s communicated to the reader.  I’m a fan of small details being mentioned and never explained to make the world feel full, but for key points the author needs to spend time to tell the reader what these ideas are.  More importantly, this needs to be done early enough that I don’t get lost and lose the narrative.  Stevermer does get around to explaining Solitaires, Traders, Silvestri, and Manticors, but it takes way to long.  I probably read the word Trader a hundred times, including several in-depth conversations, before the author decided to tell me what everything meant.  The effect of this meant I spent the first quarter of the book trying to figure out what was going on, which continually pulled me out of the narrative, ruining my enjoyment of it.  To compound the problem, what explanations we do eventually get do not go nearly far enough in explaining the key concepts I need to know to understand how the world works.

Had Stevermer done a better job explaining the world building, this had a chance of being a good book, even with the plot being somewhat average.  The world-building is poorly communicated enough to drop it from three stars to two.

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