Name: City of Dark Magic
ISBN: 9780143122685

Magnus Flyte

A music student working in Prague cataloging Beethoven's manuscripts discovers clues that her deceased mentor may not have committed suicide and becomes involved with a time-travel drug, a 400-year-old dwarf, a handsome Prince and a powerful U.S. senator. Original.

A Novel

City of Dark Magic

Ipek

On the cover of the edition I have, there is a quote from Conan O'Brien who commends this novel for "having it all" and then goes on to enumerate the items on the "all" list: "murder in Prague, time travel, a misanthropic Beethoven, tantric sex, and a dwarf with attitude." In trying to pinpoint what is so wrong with the book, this quote is a good place to begin. The book indeed has all of these things (although actual time travel had not yet occurred at around page 200, also the point at which I abandoned the book, so maybe it was not a very good idea to announce it on the cover) and they sort of are... just there. You can see the stitches and seams between those concepts or tropes (clichés, the word I'm looking for is clichés) that barely hold them together, and this visibility of the inner workings is not some modernist attempt at defamiliarization, you can tell. 

The cardboard effect is probably most evident in the characterization of Sarah. I saw some people here who were upset at Sarah's promiscuity and the way she "owned" it. And it's easy to bash those people for being narrow-minded or prudish or whatever, but I'd like to think that they were trying to give a name to the unease they were feeling with her depiction. Sarah is a gifted musicologist, she is from a working class background and she has a lot of sex. The musicology stuff is to get her to Prague and to involve her in that subplot, the working class background gives her "depth" and rounds her up as a real character (so it is hoped) and the having a lot of sex and owning it stuff... helps her make friends? moves the plot forward? Are these the things out of which a character is made? The shoddy construction of her being is just as distracting as that of the plot. This book is a bulletin board with "cool ideas for the new book" written at the top, and it's barely held together by the fan-fictiony narratorial voice ("he was hot in both the classical Renaissance sense and in a totally cheesy vampire movie one, too.") 

TL,DR: I think this book has put me off post-WW2 fiction for some time, and also, I knew it wasn't a good idea to read a book recommended by Conan O'Brien.

Carla Aquino

If you are a lover of mysteries and want a twist from your typical book then you will want to read this because it is mixed with classical symphonies, alchemy, and dark matter....you will love this book. Physicists might also find this book amusing. It also may appeal to the romantics too. On a side note you might want to catch up on some Beethoven history and music if you want to have any clue what symphonies are being referred to. Overall its a good read. Not bad at all.

Jessica Nottingham

I can't finish this. Only 20% in and I'm not only confused, I'm bored and mildly baffled at Sarah's character. I'm not a prude, but the sheer amount of sexual tension/acts in the first part of this book really threw me off. I'm just done.

City of Dark Magic A Novel

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