The Last Days of Magic by Mark Tompkins
My rating: 2 of 5 stars
I received a copy of this book through Penguin’s First to Read program. The premise sounded great — a synthesis of myth, legend, fairy tales, and Biblical mysteries? Sounds like a fun time. I can’t fault the writer, as it is exactly what it says on the tin, a bend of all of those stories, exhaustively researched and stitched together so that even as a history the fictional threads are hard to discern, even a bit exciting to see. Oh, Chaucer makes a cameo? Gutenberg? It’s like some great historical figure mash-up!
But I think it’s the exhaustive part that wore me down, eventually. All that research and detail makes it into the book, which starts out in modern day with a compelling plot line, disappears into the 1300s for 375 pages, and then returns to the modern day for the last few pages, and I can’t help but wish we’d stayed more in the modern day. The book is well written and everything, and I’m sure you could go fact-check every single reference Tompkins makes, but I just found it too much like reading a historical register and began skimming pages about 150 pages in. Characters’ motivations seemed to be explained over and over again and I felt like each and every group of them were held at an arm’s length for inspection, explication, until the color wore out of them.
But the world is very detailed, the writing pretty good, and the facts are there to be enjoyed (as well as those cameos), so I’m sure that maybe I’m just not the right audience for the book.