A solid book, I enjoyed myself. The descriptions of New York's The Gilded Age was enjoyable. I love books set in this era and I had fun taking in the lush descriptions. The premise was really interesting but I found the plot to be disjointed and choppy. The ending was also a bit predictable. In terms of the characters, I liked Thalia as the protagonist. She was strong and independent and I connected to her.
Overall, this was a good book. I recommend if you're looking for a book with an interesting magic system and a strong protagonist.

I wasn't able to read the book but I will be featuring it in a series called "I Wish I'd Read That'. Text below:

When I hear Gilded Age, my eyes kind of glaze over. Needless to say, the description of The Glass Magician had me from the first sentence of the description. This tale of magic sounds truly historic, combining the New York culture of the early 1900s with a seeping darkness that seems poised to overtake the later parts of the novel. It sounds like a wonderful escape from present day, and I’m bummed I didn’t get a chance to read it this year. Read more about the author and book below, or purchase a copy for yourself. And of course, a big thank you to Tor Books for the free review copy!

Three and a half stars, rounded up.

Shapeshifters and soul-eaters in vaudeville New York, at least that is my easy way to describing this book in one sentence. Thalia is a young woman who has inherited her father's magic stage show. While traveling the vaudeville circuit, she discovers something about herself that will change her life forever. Thalia suddenly must navigate around accusations of murder and theft of intellectual property, the loss of her beloved stage show and livelihood, the abrupt disappearance of a dear friend, unfamiliar magic, and learning new skills with new friends, all while trying to preserve her own life.

A couple cons: I do wish that the characters and their relationships were developed a bit more. Things happened between the characters that did make sense with respect to the direction of the plot, but there was definitely room for more development and backstory. I also was hoping that we would learn more about the magic in the world. This was not explained enough and it would've added a lot to the world, it felt like we were just assumed to understand a lot of the fantastical elements of the story.

However, I feel that the author pulled off the vaudeville/magical turn of the century world quite well. It was a unique setting and the concept for the plot was really promising. If this was developed into a series, which the ending did kind of leave room for, I would likely read more.

Thank-you to NetGalley and the publisher for my advanced reader copy!

Plot: ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Characters: ⭐⭐⭐
Fantasy: ⭐⭐⭐
Writing: ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Overall: ⭐⭐⭐ ½, rounded up

i really enjoyed reading this book, i loved the mixture of scifi and the time period. the characters were great and the writing style was also great.

The story is set in the Victorian era where women were expected to be dainty, demure, and focused solely on domestic duties. Thalia has just inherited her father's magic show when he supernatural powers manifest and get her into all kinds of troubles. It is during one such time that a manticore, a magic-sniffing beast is able to sense her and comes quite close to hunting her down. On top of this, her business rival mysteriously dies, bringing Thalia under scrutiny. Can she successfully succeed her father in running her father's magic show and learn how to control her powers?

This book was a bit hit and miss for me. While I liked the idea of manticores and other fantastical creatures, I found the book to be a bit bland to me. I didn't think the stakes were high enough or that Thalia struggled enough in accomplishing her goals. Also, my kindle edition seemed to have a lot of formatting errors that made the story a bit difficult to read.

I love historical fiction, but something about this fantasy story just didn't appeal to me. The plot was fairly well paced and the characters were fine but I felt quite lukewarm about the book as a whole and wasn't drawn in

Thalia Cutler, a nearly unknown stage magician, realizes she has real magic--but this new reality has both up and downsides for her burgeoning career. Suddenly drawn into the privileged world of the magically endowed, she needs to thread her way into a place into a world filled with dangers. Original, and compelling, this new YA was a delight from beginning to end.

Carnival Row meets Pride and Prejudice, but completely underwhelming. The premise is exciting and full of fantastical potential, yet the plot is stagnant and nothing like how it was marketed, so beware of that.

The setting is in New York City in the year 1905, where our MC Thalia Cutler is struggling to find recognition in the male-dominated field of being a stage magician. I was left utterly confused from the beginning, as we are thrown in the midst of a world which was not explained in the slightest. Social standing was a huge point of importance and topic of conversation, but what is a Solitaire, Trader, or Sylvestri exactly? Since there was no context, the politics and the characters struggles meant nothing to me for a very long time, and only midway had I begun to grasp a bit of what all the races were and their social hierarchy. Solitaire = non-magical, Trader = animal shapeshifters, Sylvestri = nature elves??, Manticore = necrotic Trader-eating animal-hybrid shifters, Skinners = Manticore hunters...or at least that's what I had gathered, but there are no explanations as to the why. More importantly, why should I care?

I have questions like...why were Traders usually wealthy, and what purpose could possibly make them such a commodity, especially considering their shorter lifespan? Why did the races dislike each other so much? What does their magic do other than shapeshift, and I presume, grow plants? Why do Manticores even exist, other than for pushing the plot for our MC? Are Skinners a race, or is it just a profession? One that really bugged me is, why use the term "Manticore" when these creatures are not manticores? What physical features were used to distinguish between races, which was alluded to a few times, but only really gave detail on skin color which was not consistent?

The pacing and buildup was so slow, that by the time Thalia's pivotal moment hits we're already more than halfway through the book, which really should have happened between 20-30%. The rest of the story is spent with Thalia struggling to learn how to Trade, suddenly falling for the love interest because he stopped being racist only due to discovering they are the same race, and having her personal issues overshadowed by a random murder mystery that she much too conveniently solves in the dullest way imaginable, all for naught. Really, I have no idea why the plot twisted in this way because it did nothing for the MC other than reveal some interesting information at the end, which could have been presented in a multitude of much more engaging ways.

The characters were forgettable. I had an issue with the dialogue and how each character didn't have much of a distinctive voice, and had to re-read some passages over a few times to decipher tone and personality. The story was pretty forgettable as well, as I didn't like the structure. When I realized her mirror performance was the big showdown, I laughed because it was just so ridiculously boring and convenient. This is the point in time which the book is titled? Just, wow. Where was the glitz, the showy performances? Her stage magic and acting was such a snooze-fest to be honest, and I was unimpressed with the supposed 'character growth' and 'control' she presented at her trial—the aimless climax fizzled out big time.

Contrary to the impression I've likely provided you, I didn't hate this book. The Glass Magician is perfectly mediocre, however I was very disappointed with the quality versus what I had expected. I love the concept behind the story, it really is marvelous, but the execution really let me down as it was just so painfully boring, and what exactly was the main plot? I still don't know. Was it supposed to be the grappling of her identity, improving her social status, finding her family, being an outstanding performer? None of these aspects were really fully addressed or wrapped up. The ending hinted at a series and all I could think was, "Ugh, no".

The Glass Magician took me two full weeks to read, which is a little longer than it typically takes me to read a book of this size. It was a peculiar read. On the one hand, female magicians! People who can become animals! Stage magic! Rivalry! I love all these things and this book had them all. But there was something about this book that felt rough, like it could do with a little more polishing and smoothing out around the edges.

The premise - an up-and-coming stage magician Thalia isn't one of the Traders, those who can "trade" their human forms for animal ones - was cool. Then a trick goes wrong and she's thrust into a very different kind of world to the one she knows. But it felt like it took me forever to get into this book, to begin to enjoy that character's and care about their motives.

It is hard to review an average book. There were aspects I definitely liked, like Thalia and her job and the idea of Traders, but none of it was enough to turn this into an engrossing page turner. The Glass Magician was simply a perfectly fine and enjoyable book.

I enjoyed this novel -- the main character is interesting, and the plot moves along, spelling out the interesting ~early 1920s setting and the types of magical (or not) people, then setting up a mystery. It felt like an urban fantasy with a touch of romance to it and a character with a mysterious backstory that she doesn't even know. I'll read the sequel.

This was good! It has a female magician so it can't be bad! I loved the magic and setting. Writting was exqusite. I hope there's a sequel.

Reminiscent of The Golden and the Jinni, #The Glass Magician by #Caroline Stevermer is a magical and romantic tale set in New York’s Gilded age.
New York 1905-The Vanderbilts, The Astor’s, The Morgan’s. They are the cream of the society and Thalia Cutlia doesn’t have any of those family connections. What she does know is stage magic and dazzles audiences. Until one night a trick goes horribly awry. In surviving she discovers she can shapeshift, and has the potential to take her place among them.
But first she’ll have to learn to control that power...before the real monsters descend to feast.
Thank you,
#Netgalley,#Caroline Stevemer and #Macmillan/Tor/Forge

Thalia Cutler was a stage magician - the Lady of the Lake who escaped death by a falling sword. But in Philadelphia, when a cuff refused to open, she changed and escaped. That is how she and her partner David Nutall discovered she was a Trader, not a Solitaire. Then, in New York City, when she used a different trick - catching a rifle ball, she finds herself out of work due to a different magician's no compete clause in his contract. Then the magician was murdered performing his trick. Then the manticores, creatures who eat Traders magic, started sniffing around Thalia. She needed to solve the murder to clear her partner's name while learning to Trade into her animal form so that she was no longer under risk of the manticores. An interesting historical urban fantasy read to enjoy!

The Glass Magician is kind of a mixed bag for me. I enjoyed the characters and their interactions, I was pulled into the story and engaged enough to keep reading, but I felt like it was missing something. When I got toward the end I felt like some things had been rushed over. The ordeal did not feel like an ordeal, it felt a bit lackluster and underwhelming. I also felt like Thalia went from not able to trade at all (or barely) to having mastered it in a very short and unconvincing amount of time. I also felt like the ending posed a lot more questions than it really answered. I felt like the book should just be starting or somewhere in the middle instead of the end. I wanted to know more about Thalia and her family and about Nuttall. I also felt like the romance was a bit forced. The writing itself was very well done and was lovely to read, and the characters were interesting and convincing, but the story needs a little more focus and fleshing out in places.

The Glass Magician was a great read. It is set in the older days and the humans are distinguished into different classes of society. There are the Solitaires (ordinary humans), Traders (shape-shifters), and Sylvestri (nature-type people, not much information given about them). The plot line keep me engaged as a reader and I couldn’t put it down. It was woven with magic and a murder mystery, both which I love to read. The Glass Magician begins with Thalia, a stage magician, who believes that she is a simple Solitaire, rather than a Trader or Sylvestri. One night, a trick goes wrong, and Thalia discovers she can shape shift. However, with this discovery she finds herself in a whirlwind of accusations and life-threatening instances. Read more to see how she navigates these trying times. Thanks to NetGalley for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

What a delightful tale, set in an early 20th Century world in which humans are divided into ordinary Solitaires, shape-shifting Traders, and ecology-minded Silvestri. The story focuses on Thalia, a magic performer, and her manager, Nutall, who’s acted as a parental figure after the deaths of her parents. When a rival stage magician gets them booted from their gig using a noncompete clause, their future looks grim. Then the rival turns up dead and Nutall is the prime suspect. To make matters worse, Thalia, who has always believed herself to be a nonmagical Solitaire, under the stress of a trick gone dangerously wrong, shape-shifts (“Trades”). Newly fledged Traders are not yet in control of their powers and become the prey of magic-consuming manticores. Now Thalia’s very life is at risk until she can master her magic, at the same time she’s determined to prove her mentor’s innocence and unmask the real murderer. The world and its characters are beautifully, charmingly drawn, with the effortless skill of a consummate storyteller.

There’s a lot of very cool stuff about stage magic, fine characterization, a murder mystery, and a slew of plot twists. The thing that impressed me most, though, was the subtle use of swan imagery. Thalia Trades into the form of a swan, hissing in irritation at the unfairness of life when she’s not preening her feathers. But swans also appear here and there, like bits delicate, snowy down.

The Glass Magician is set in an alternative Gilded Age New York City in which magic exists beyond the stage performance. Thalia is a stage magician who realizes after watching a trick go horribly wrong for her and again on stage for someone else that there is more to her world than she knew before. It is a world of shape shifters tied by bloodline, and she is one of them after thinking she was a Solitaire (a human who doesn't shape shift) for her entire life.

I ended up feeling rather so-so about the last third of the book because it felt both melodramatic and rushed at the same time. The magic trick at the end to reveal the true killer and motive didn't seem to flow as well with the story as I would have liked, but I think that's also to do with the world building. However, it did leave me hopeful that there would be more books set in this universe because the foundation has been laid for a lot more exploration and examination.

I enjoy "quiet" novels, stories that are a bit slower and softer than the usual fantasy fare of high-octane action. I loved the setting of an alternate New York City in the Gilded Age, and I imagined magic and magic tricks revealed and performed in gas-lit rooms and lush dresses of mint and lilac and rose contrasting with the darker elements of this society and the magic therein. Most of these thoughts were more of my own projections of my enthusiasm of the era, but I enjoyed this book for what it was. I think I was left wanting because I knew there could be more - from world building to character development to character interactions. So much of it felt like a superficial magic trick. Pretty to read and to look at, but I felt like I could see right through the tricks.

I enjoyed this title so much! I thought the plot was so intriguing, and the characterization very strong! The description used by the author was so evocative I felt transported, and I kept turning until the very last page. I think the cover is very cute - I'll be sure to purchase this for my store!

I was torn on this one. There were a lot of great ideas and ideas that I loved, but I had two main issues with it. First, the pacing was rough. For the first half of the book, there’s very little magic, explanation, or plot movement. The second half was much better, but it made for a bit of a slog at the start. Second, the although the ending wasn’t bad, it did feel fairly contrived. Yes, it wrapped up the story, but it wasn’t really satisfying.

Fortunately, though, the bits I liked carried the story very well! I’m a huge fan of historical fantasy, and this one had that in spades. Similarly, it’s a bunch of fun to see a fantasy novel that focuses not only on real magic, but also stage magic. In The Glass Magician, there are three main social classes: Solitaires, who are unmagical, Traders, who are able to “trade” to an animal shape, and Sylvestri, who work magic with nature. Stage magic is the realm of Solitaires, and Thalia is an accomplished stage magician herself.

She and her partner are implicated in the murder of a rival stage magician, and Thalia must not only work to clear their names, but also to learn to control her newly revealed Trader nature.

The character interactions were entertaining to watch, although the romantic subplot fell a little flat for me. The best part of this book was definitely working to unravel the murder mystery and watching Thalia work to control her magic.

Though it never reached the heights of A College of Magics, which is one of my favourite novels, I appreciated the worldbuilding and stagesetting. Glad to see Stevermer still writing.