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MY RATING:

BRIEF SYNOPSIS: In the late Victorian Era, two stage magicians engage in a personal rivalry that quickly escalates to active sabotage of each other's stage performances. This rivalry becomes so strong that even their descendants are caught up in it web.

PROS: Excellent story, interesting character, great writing, big SF reveal near the end.
CONS: The ending just didn't live up to the rest of the book.
BOTTOM LINE: Another great Victorian Era 'urban fantasy' story. If you aren't big on regular epic fantasy, this book may be for you. If you like urban fantasy, definitely read this book.

MY REVIEW:
The Prestige is not your average urban fantasy story. There are no trolls, elves or fairies. In fact, the only magic involved is stage magic, performed by illusionists at the height of their power. What follows is a compelling story of an intense, personal rivalry between two master magicians. Christopher Priest, who also wrote the excellent Inverted World, has created a fascinating story, full of twists and deceptions, that was a pleasure to read, and I'm not usually a fan of fantasy, epic or otherwise. Although with this book, The Light Ages, and Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrel that is changing.

After reading several scathing letters, written by Rupert Angier, critical of the current stage magicians methods, Alfred Borden makes it a point to try and professionally discredit Angier. Borden discovers that Angier is performing seances and manages to disrupt one, showing Angier to be a 'fraud'. This act sets into motion a chain of events that will tie the two magicians, and their descendent's, together for the rest of their lives. What follows is series of sabotage, deception and missed reconciliations that ratchet up the consequences for each magician as time goes on. Each magician experiences sabotage of their acts, sometimes with almost deadly results. Both try to discover the secrets behind the other's premier act, the ultimate disgrace for an illusionist. Both acts achieve the same result: the apparent transportation of the magician from one place on stage to another. Borden's, called The New Transported Man, occurs between two cabinets placed on either end of the stage. Angier's is an elaborate affair using the newly discovered electricity, called In A Flash, for its power and mystery and occurs between the stage and any point in the audience. Both use a different method to achieve their results and both fail to discover the other's secret behind their illusion. In fact, only toward the end, where Borden's and Angier's descendent's work to put the rivalry behind, do we fully see the secrets behind the acts, and the decidedly grim consequences of those performances.

The two main characters, Angier and Borden, are sympathetic and compelling. Each, in their youth, let their emotions run away from them resulting in the long running feud between them. They each try to put an end to it, but for various reasons are unable to, which ultimately ends with tragedy and regret. Christopher Priest has done a great job writing these characters. In part, this is due to how the story unfolds. We get an intro section where Kate Angier and Andrew Westley, Angier and Borden's descendent's, get together to discuss the animosity between the two families and to go over the only remaining copy of a book written by Borden. Part autobiography and part technical manual, this book covers the life of Borden as well as discussing the details of his illusions. The story then becomes told by Borden, as written in his book. Here there are clues that Borden's life is not as it seems, and there is a mystery surrounding him, which isn't revealed until the end. After a brief interlude where Kate and Andrew discuss what was written in the book, Priest moves us again to the main story, this time told from Angier's perspective, as written down in his diaries. This is the majority of the book, and we see his reasons for the feud, his attempts at reconciliation, and his creation of his 'In A Flash' illusion in an attempt to out-do Borden's 'The New Transported Man'. It's at this point that a huge SF aspect enters the story, much like in Singularity. I won't say much more, other than to say it involves Nikolai Tesla. The last section of the book, called The Prestiges, ultimately ties the past and present together. And it's this ending that I felt didn't measure up to what had gone before. I can't say much more because it would spoil most of the book. Suffice it to say that the ending gave me a big 'Wha?' feeling. As in, 'What? That's the end?'. I felt there should have been a bit more explanation, as the end didn't seem to match up to what had gone before.

But that's not enough to knock this book down more than half a star. The strength of this book is in the characters and their stories, with dose of hard SF tossed in near the end to ratcheted up the cool factor. I think just about any fan of SF/F will enjoy this book and makes me wonder if any of the other stuff Priest has written is as good as this book and his 'Inverted World'.

Share: | Posted by JP on Monday March 13, 2006 - 9:51 AM | Category: Book Review | © 2006 SF Signal

I love all of Priest's recent books. The Separation, The Extremes, The Glamour...all very cool. All in that fine line between Slipstream, Sf and Fantasy.

But you should probaly check out The Affirmation next (stay with it...can't say anymore).

Posted by James on Monday March 13, 2006 at 10:18 AM

I, on the other hand, think the ending should have knocked the book down more than half a star. I was shocked and disappointed by the abrupt and unexplained ending to the book, which up to that point had been excellent.

Posted by Brandon on Thursday March 23, 2006 at 12:51 PM

Read 'The Affirmation' !!
May I suggest that if you were disappointed in the ending of "the Prestige' you perhaps may not have quite 'got it'. Priest's stories always seem to have at least one more layer than they seem to!
I've been fan of CP for over 25 years and own and have read (and re-read many times) all of his novels and short stories. Check out 'Infinite Summer' (a collection of short stories), 'The Glamour','A Dream Of Wessex', 'The Separation' - in fact anything you can find - I'm sure you'll like it all to some degree. But definitely read 'The Affirmation'. Also check out CP's home page: www.christopher-priest.co.uk

Posted by Andrew on Sunday April 02, 2006 at 5:15 AM

Great, great book guys.
Andrew, could you please send me an email so that we can share our point of views about THE PRESTIGE ending?
Id really appreciate it.

My email is leotatsch AT gmail DOT com.
Thanks.

[ED: I (hopefully) spam-proofed your email address, Leo]

Posted by Leo Tatsch on Friday July 07, 2006 at 12:13 AM

I got a weird interpretation at the end. I think that a dead Angier at the end was just staged. Angier and his manager could have made a clone before that incident, just to make Bordon(or the twin) feel satisfied for revenge maybe of his twin brother and by that they would be even so Bordon (or the twin) can be with the little girl (i remember when Angier's manager made a visit on his home and said that the child needs her father). The last line "You want to be fooled" as slowly panning the camera from the dead body to the glass chamber would mean that the viewers were actually fooled by the ending, having a thought that Angier really died. The ending of the movie itself was part of the trick, that's the whole point of the movie, that's why the narration of the three acts of magic trick was repeated at the end of the movie, the prestige. You're fooled!

Posted by Mark on Tuesday February 20, 2007 at 3:19 AM

I thought that the ending of the book was actually very good.
it left a lot up to the imagination and it didn't spell out everything like so many other books do. I thought that it was great how readers are left in the dark when the voice comes from the cavern and they don't know for sure who it is.

Posted by Sanjaya on Thursday May 24, 2007 at 9:54 PM

Argh the end baked my brain! I was really enjoying the book, and thinking about the way the film had used it and changed it (to make a pretty ace film, i think), and then I found myself rereading the last pages or so to see if I had missed something. I then reread the first part, and the Kate Angier section, just in case I had missed something there. But I think not..... brain pain...

Posted by Riapia on Sunday March 16, 2008 at 11:18 AM