NEW FAVOURITE – The last magician (review)

Title: The last magician

Author: Lisa Maxwell

Format: Audiobook

Publisher: Simon&shuster audio

Page count: 512 (16h 7min)

Release day: 18 July 2017

Series: The last magician #1

Genre/topics: YA fantasy, time travel, heist

Rating: 5 stars

What is it about? (Summary from GoodReads)

Stop the Magician. Steal the book. Save the future.

In modern-day New York, magic is all but extinct. The remaining few who have an affinity for magic—the Mageus—live in the shadows, hiding who they are. Any Mageus who enters Manhattan becomes trapped by the Brink, a dark energy barrier that confines them to the island. Crossing it means losing their power—and often their lives.

Esta is a talented thief, and she’s been raised to steal magical artifacts from the sinister Order that created the Brink. With her innate ability to manipulate time, Esta can pilfer from the past, collecting these artifacts before the Order even realizes she’s there. And all of Esta’s training has been for one final job: traveling back to 1902 to steal an ancient book containing the secrets of the Order—and the Brink—before the Magician can destroy it and doom the Mageus to a hopeless future.

But Old New York is a dangerous world ruled by ruthless gangs and secret societies, a world where the very air crackles with magic. Nothing is as it seems, including the Magician himself. And for Esta to save her future, she may have to betray everyone in the past.

My thoughts:

Actually all you need to know is that this is a new favourite of mine and that you need to read it if you haven’t yet!

Okay but for real, this book was amazing! I had heard about this book a lot and kinda waved it of as ‘I would maybe read it someday’ and then randomly I felt like listening to this book. Then I was pretty disappointed in myself for not paying more attention to this book.. Time travel and heists are one of my favourite topics in books, this one contains both, HOW DID I NOT KNOW..?! So I was bound to love it and I did. I’m so happy I picked it up, and will probably listen to the sequel soon!

You could see this book as the child of Six of Crows and the diviners. It contains the heist and they grey characters from Six of crows, and has a comparable magic system and setting as the diviners.

So why did I love this book?

• The characters. I loved that for most of them you didn’t really thrust them, because with their character they could go either way. Like save them all or betray them. Esta, our main character, is so snarky and sarcastic, I loved it. Then The Magician is maybe my favourite character! I loved him so much! (One downside, Esta cares a lot about ‘her people’ from her time, but we don’t really get to know them, so you can’t really feel with her).
• The magic system. I love that every persons magic is different. This was so well done, since sometimes you know this certain person has magic, since it is said/implied, but you don’t know what. Until they surprise you with it! I just love those types of magic systems!
• The scheming. Of course you need some scheming to plan a heist! I loved it. Especially almost knew the whole plan, so people keep being ‘surprised’ by what is happening. And you included.
• The setting. As I said before I love time travel in books. Especially if you actually don’t really need to know that much history to follow! (History was not my favourite topic..) But it still feels realistic. I just really enjoyed this old New York setting, it was well described and I could image how it looked like! (never been in NY though, so I was probably really wrong haha)
• Twists. The twists at the ending.. I was sitting with my mouth open. That’s all I’m going to say.

Because of all these factors I could just not put the book down! I’m sorry for the schoolwork that got delayed, but you know #priorities.

If you haven’t read this yet, please do! It is amazing, and I really recommend the audiobook!

Come talk to me!

What was the last new favourite book you found?