#mister magic

[stil-lindigo]

my love is mine all mine

[jasper-the-menace]

If I had a dollar for every horror book I read this year (that was also published this year) in which a conservative cult used powers beyond mortal ken to enforce their conservative agenda onto a bunch of queer and neurodivergent children who then turned that power around to decimate the cult at some point in their lives, I would have two dollars, which isn't a lot but it's great that it happened twice.

Anyway, read Camp Damascus by Chuck Tingle and Mister Magic by Kiersten White.

[catfindr]

[the-woman-upstairs]

Favorite Horror Novels I Read in 2023:

[songofsunset]

A) I just accidentally stayed up WAY past my bedtime reading this book in one go

B) this book should be read by everyone who is exmormon and even remotely interested in horror/fantasy/those weird children's shows with a cast of kids hanging out and doing things

[lgbtqreads]

Better Know an Author: Kiersten White

Today on the site, I am absolutely thrilled to be chatting with powerhouse author Kiersten White, whose newest novel, Lucy Undying, releases tomorrow from Del Rey! Lucy Undying is gloriously lush and Gothic lit fic that travels between past and present (slash near future) telling the story of Dracula‘s Lucy Westenra, and before we get to my chat with the author, here’s a little more about the…

[selkiemaidenfae]

books read in 2023: mister magic by kiersten white

✧✧✧✧

"as the years passed, the fear didn't fade, but she grew into it. grew around it. grew stubborn and strong-willed, ignoring the shape of the fear at the core of her. and even though she wanted to know, needed to know, how her mother died, she wasn't going to ask. not ever."

[july-19th-club]

"mister magic" a genuinely good book so far. a little over halfway through it and it definitely is one of those ones you want to go into completely blind but i'm really enjoying it . does a good job of laying enough breadcrumbs that the reader picks up on where it's going before some of the characters do, but the characters don't look dumb for taking so long to figure it out because they have personalities/experiences that preclude them from Noticing certain stuff, and it's not SO spelled out that the reader who gets it really early will get bored; there are still things you want answers to or elaboration on. and that is ALL i will say for now

[kenzie-eli-reads-books]

About the Reviewer

My name is Mackenzie (he/him) and I'm your local library creature guy. This is where I'll be leaving my bookish thoughts.

Three of my most recent favorites:

Other books that I love:

I read any genre, though I do have my favorites, so I'll be talking about a bunch of different reading experiences. You can follow me on storygraph if you'd like.

[chainsawcorazon]

the “there’s a hole in the world” concept will never not have me shook like imagine…… a hole in the world……… with kreetures and tings……….

[bigdreamsandwildthings]

September wrap up 🤍 my faves this month were The Shadow Cabinet and You, Again!

[mthollowell-writes]

"Your favorite childhood television program feels like a fever dream. You don't remember it at all until I start humming the theme song and then--oh, I can see it in your eyes. The wash of images, ideas feelings."

Kiersten White, Mister Magic

[completelychaoticbabe]

Mister Magic is a must read for anyone who remembers a show that apparently never existed ~

[itslarsyouguys]

I am being read to filth by this book, I think I said some of this verbatim yesterday. I feel like I knew how difficult being a parent would be, but because I had this really deep unshakable love for my mother I always thought I would feel that coming from my children, and it’s so difficult to have them at stages of their life where they can’t emotionally regulate and regularly lash out telling me I am the worst mom and they hate me. Since my remaining parent is the one who has always been emotionally abusive and kept his love from me, I really thought having my own kids was a way to feel surrounded by love and instead I am constantly drained of my love? With no way to refill myself so I can continue to pour that love into the children like they want/need

[alikestoread12]

October Wrap Up !!

The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes by Suzanne Collins: 4.75/5⭐️

Mister Magic by Kiersten White: 3.75/5⭐️

Simon vs. The Homosapiens Agends: 5/5⭐️ (reread)

I went into November reading Bright Young Women by Jessica Knolls (page 200), Being Lolita by Alisson Wood (page 150), and The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue by V.E. Schwab (page 142)

[pb-dot]

Mister Magic

I'm always searching for good horror audiobooks because, I suppose, people reading to me just never gets old, and I got to get my dose of The Horrors somehow. Most of the time I find something too self-indulgent or too mindless to be any good, but every once in a while I find something like Mister Magic.

Val can't remember her childhood, but she has always assumed something bad happened and that it in some way was her fault. She is about as content as she can be with her past being a painful mystery until her Friends find her again. Turns out, Val was part of the long-running TV series Mister Magic as a child until just before a tragedy saw the thing cancelled. Now, a cast reunion and retrospective may see the show rebooted, but Val can't shake the feeling that her past should perhaps stay buried.

Mister Magic is another in the "adults re-experience some Fucked Up Magical Shit from their childhood" genre of story, akin to King's It and Malfi's Black Mouth, although the lens of the progatonist having amnesia does provide an interesting twist on the whole thing as the narration doesn't have to pussyfoot around as to why she doesn't tell the audience what exactly went down back then. She is, after all, equally as curious, and equally as apprehensive to figure out as we the readers are.

Like the other books I mentioned above, Mister Magic also makes no bones about how it is about Trauma and specifically religious trauma. It doesn't take much knowledge about the more prolific cults of the contigious US to recognize the subtext, and occasional actual text, about mormonism as the source of the trauma.

This isn't to say it's all compulsory happiness, golden plates, and magic underwear, mind you. The book also has a robust horror mythology in itself, working with settings of eerie liminality, the fear of the unknown, the terror of malevolent cults and powerful forces beyond the ken of man. The reveal of what exactly is going on and why they are doing it happens piece by piece, but as things fall into place there is a delicious chill of neo-lovecraftian bleakness to it.

There's also one of the simplest but most powerful instances of body horror I have come across. Author Kiersten White has a real talent for making ideas stick from subtext and up, and in the scene in question she really lets the hooks sink in with some truly nauseating dream logic capped off with the vague but undeniably primal fear of something fucked up being out there and waiting to GET your ass.

Speaking of things that may have a vested interest RE:your ass, the titular character and ostensible protagonist of the TV show is also very interesting to me. His presence haunts the story, but he, or perhaps "it" is more apropriate, feels more like a ghost than an actual threat. Our heroes, per a childhood agreement, do not speak his name, and they all seem to have their own interpretation of exactly what "the man in the cape" as they've come to call him, was. Without getting into spoilers, I will say that the book handles resolving the built-up expectations of what sort of a being we're dealing with here in an untraditional way, but the end result is, I would argue, more satisfying than what either It or Black Mouth could muster.

I could go on honestly, especially the characters and how the author plays with our sympathies and assumptions, and try to unpack how this book has the protagonist change and learn throughout while seeming sympathetic throughout which is a thing curiously many authors seem to struggle with, and a bunch of other things, but I feel like I've said enough. Mister Magic. It's a good book. Read it, listen to it, whatever works for you.