The design and UX isn't done, Rob and Abbie, okkurrrr! 😌
ashleylm's review against another edition
4.0
This was a very pleasant surprise, and comes close to 5 stars for me.
The beginning felt like Dungeons and Dragons before D&D had been invented, and then turned into surprising territory. It's a quest, I guess, but the quest is to find ingredients and then create something, which feels fresh, and the tone is not so serious but also not overly comic--it's striking that delicate balance and staying in the middle ground which is more to my taste.
It's an intelligently-written, refreshing book.
The beginning felt like Dungeons and Dragons before D&D had been invented, and then turned into surprising territory. It's a quest, I guess, but the quest is to find ingredients and then create something, which feels fresh, and the tone is not so serious but also not overly comic--it's striking that delicate balance and staying in the middle ground which is more to my taste.
It's an intelligently-written, refreshing book.
wethefoxen's review against another edition
3.0
Such a truly strange book. The story is fantastical and exotic, however, it sometimes reads like a textbook in alchemy and occultism. The narrative is sometimes broken by characters' thoughts and memories and lectures in magic to the point where the reader (me), is confused to where you are in the story and what you just read has to do with anything. Also, some of the grammatical structure is odd. I feel like I didn't even really understand what was going on until the end, but once I understood I found it a fun story. I just wish it had been written more straight forward. I could see it in my head as I was reading as a film or show, so there's definitely good material here. Perhaps I'm just not advanced enough to wrap my head around the narrative style.
archmageofthearchive's review against another edition
2.0
The Phoenix and the Mirror takes advantage of a tradition from medieval and Renaissance Europe wherein the Roman poet, Virgil, had ascribed to him a great many feats of wizardry and alchemy rather than poetry and statecraft. In this story, Vergil Magus gets shanghaied by a sorcerous queen to produce a magic mirror that will, when first looked into, will give her a glimpse of where her abducted daughter is. Vergil thus must navigate a naval blockade, coy political gaming, a cyclops, and other difficulties in his quest for raw copper ore and other materials, as well as to actually save the princess herself.
I'm not going to pretend that I truly *got* this book. Reading Davidson reminded me, weirdly, of reading Henry James (though more in kind than in magnitude--James is far more artfully dense). I would read the paragraphs and find myself incapable of making much sense of the sentences. I suspect this is a result of my ADHD and probably says a lot about how unusual Davidson's approach to plotting is.
That being said, I did understand the general story and there's a lot to praise about this book. Published in 1966, it follows Lord of the Rings and Narnia, but precedes Earthsea and the majority of American fantasy. This allows Davidson to avoid a lot of tropes that had not yet been codified, instead relying upon mythology and medieval mysticism to buttress his novel. The fantastical elements are derived from the mythic time when gods and heroes walked the earth. One of the most impressive moments is when Vergil and his assistant, Clemens, are constructing the mirror. Davidson dips into the metaphysics of Dante (which is fitting in a novel that focuses on Vergil), wherein the Universe is understandable and things like myth, archetypes, cultural symbols, and the sort are actually variations on the same religious cosmological themes, which can be decoded and recoded to produce magical effects. That parts pretty cool.
However, the writing style seemed to me to flatten the characters and the action. This isn't necessarily a bad thing to do, but it did impede my comprehension.
What was a bad thing to do was the depiction of women. I can't remember the last time a female character felt so completely like an object--she says nothing when Vergil rescues her and has zero opinions about how he goes about saving her. When another trap is sprung and she faces even greater peril, she is completely silent while the men banter about her fate. Readers were not as likely to speak up about these things at the time, and I don't think Davidson was malicious about this, but that doesn't change the fact that it really hobbled my enjoyment in the last 10% of the book.
Also, anyone else get some Sam Spade vibes from Vergil? There are so many moments when the book reminded me of The Maltese Falcon and other detective stories (structurally speaking), which was interesting, but I don't know if Davidson leaned into it enough.
I should reread this book someday. Not any time soon, but someday when I have more time and energy to go slowly and really dig into the text.
I'm not going to pretend that I truly *got* this book. Reading Davidson reminded me, weirdly, of reading Henry James (though more in kind than in magnitude--James is far more artfully dense). I would read the paragraphs and find myself incapable of making much sense of the sentences. I suspect this is a result of my ADHD and probably says a lot about how unusual Davidson's approach to plotting is.
That being said, I did understand the general story and there's a lot to praise about this book. Published in 1966, it follows Lord of the Rings and Narnia, but precedes Earthsea and the majority of American fantasy. This allows Davidson to avoid a lot of tropes that had not yet been codified, instead relying upon mythology and medieval mysticism to buttress his novel. The fantastical elements are derived from the mythic time when gods and heroes walked the earth. One of the most impressive moments is when Vergil and his assistant, Clemens, are constructing the mirror. Davidson dips into the metaphysics of Dante (which is fitting in a novel that focuses on Vergil), wherein the Universe is understandable and things like myth, archetypes, cultural symbols, and the sort are actually variations on the same religious cosmological themes, which can be decoded and recoded to produce magical effects. That parts pretty cool.
However, the writing style seemed to me to flatten the characters and the action. This isn't necessarily a bad thing to do, but it did impede my comprehension.
What was a bad thing to do was the depiction of women. I can't remember the last time a female character felt so completely like an object--she says nothing when Vergil rescues her and has zero opinions about how he goes about saving her. When another trap is sprung and she faces even greater peril, she is completely silent while the men banter about her fate. Readers were not as likely to speak up about these things at the time, and I don't think Davidson was malicious about this, but that doesn't change the fact that it really hobbled my enjoyment in the last 10% of the book.
Also, anyone else get some Sam Spade vibes from Vergil? There are so many moments when the book reminded me of The Maltese Falcon and other detective stories (structurally speaking), which was interesting, but I don't know if Davidson leaned into it enough.
I should reread this book someday. Not any time soon, but someday when I have more time and energy to go slowly and really dig into the text.
pedanther's review
adventurous
mysterious
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
3.5
In a world inspired by medieval legends, the magus Virgil is set an almost-impossible task that takes him to many strange places. Arguably the world itself is the main character, rather than Virgil: we get many lovingly detailed descriptions of the places he goes, and the people who live there, and the weird stuff that happens (and I suspect plenty of in-jokes for people more familiar with the original legends than I am). Of Virgil himself, we get a less detailed picture; we're told a lot about what he does, but much less about who he is as a person. For much of the book, I was struggling to keep interested because I wasn't emotionally invested; Virgil tends to keep his reactions to himself, and the world is so whimsically constructed that it's often unclear what the stakes are in any given threat or obstacle he faces. We do eventually get some clear human stakes that hooked me into the story -- two chapters before the end. Which is better than nothing, and meant that I at least found the ending emotionally satisfying, but I had to get a lot of stuff that I didn't find engaging before I reached it.
egelantier's review against another edition
4.0
a quasy reread, since i've read this book several times in russian (and, going by this time, the translator did a very decent job). a somehow disjointed story of alt!history-fantasy vergil, an alchemist and magus, going on a quest to create a virgin speculum, a magical mirror that would reflect its owner's desire, for elusive and dangerous cordelia, a dowager queen. it's a weird, dense, richly styled, beautiful book, full of weirdly dated gender fail (there's this whole sequence in cyprus that's just, no), packed with gorgeous and cleverly twisted historical and literary allusions, but my favorite part, and the reason i've re-read it, lazily, about five or six times, is the amazing competence porn in the description of the process of actually creating the magical mirror. there's an overarching plot and a political intrigue and a magical twist ending and an adventure to find some ingredients, and it's all good, but the making of the mirror, described in a loving, finicky detail is just so incredibly satisfying. you can't believe how much tension can fit into finding the proper wax for making the models, for example.
astroneatly's review against another edition
adventurous
funny
lighthearted
relaxing
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
2.5
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