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The Magician
“Andrea’s gore was dark red, nearly brown, and smelled of meat and piss. She must have wet herself on account of all the drugs…”
California brings out the fucking worst in people. Makes them junkies, whores, killers - failed saints, predatory sinners. Must be something in the land or maybe the water. Something old and evil. Waiting. The Magician is an incantatory trip to this cursed heart of darkness. A modern horror tale of sexual violence and deep psychological harm. Unflinchingly narrated in spare, economic prose climaxing in hallucinatory brutality, Christopher Zeischegg has conjured a dark fable of the American dream as it slides into unending nightmare.
Christopher Zeischegg is a writer, musician, and filmmaker who spent eight years working in the adult industry as performer Danny Wylde. His other books include The Wolves That Live in Skin and Space and Body to Job. He lives in Los Angeles.
California brings out the fucking worst in people. Makes them junkies, whores, killers - failed saints, predatory sinners. Must be something in the land or maybe the water. Something old and evil. Waiting. The Magician is an incantatory trip to this cursed heart of darkness. A modern horror tale of sexual violence and deep psychological harm. Unflinchingly narrated in spare, economic prose climaxing in hallucinatory brutality, Christopher Zeischegg has conjured a dark fable of the American dream as it slides into unending nightmare.
Christopher Zeischegg is a writer, musician, and filmmaker who spent eight years working in the adult industry as performer Danny Wylde. His other books include The Wolves That Live in Skin and Space and Body to Job. He lives in Los Angeles.
408 pages, Paperback
First published February 13, 2020
13 people are currently reading
1834 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 56 reviews
June 17, 2021
when i was 18 i had to get my wisdom teeth taken out. they were impacted so they had to basically break them out of my jaw. i was offered anesthesia but declined because i was afraid that when i woke up i would tell my mom i smoked weed. so i stayed awake with headphones in while a team of oral surgeons shattered my teeth and wrenched them from my head, my mouth splayed open by a metal stretcher. when it was over i felt like i just got the shit kicked out of me, which i guess i kind of did. i didn’t get any pain pills for a few hours after and was howling by the time the novocain wore off. i spent the next four days blasted on hydros, blissful and constipated. my blood soaked through gauze and i repacked it. i let huge crimson loogies tumble out of my mouth. it was like i was undergoing a transformation. pretty much every single moment in the magician felt like this experience to me. a haze of narcotics and blood and malaise and pain and distance. it fucking rocks, is the point. don’t deprive yourself of this.
August 2, 2022
A floundering ex-porn star searches for faith and stability in the midst of ongoing crises and physical harm. Between church pews and a dark summer solstice charred by flames, only one side will grant him results. Dark and desperate horror at a dirt crossroad provides an ultimate reveal. The personal nature of struggle and indecision is personified by the narrator. This novel satisfied me.
February 25, 2025
3.5 stars.
December 7, 2025
Some writers are built for immortality — and they steal from painters to get there.
Proust dressed Swann’s desire in Botticelli.
Dostoyevsky let faces rot into symbols.
Zeischegg… gestures toward the museum and ends up at the souvenir stand.
One of his characters is introduced through pop-iconography — Azalea Banks, naked, drenched in milk in Playboy. Desire hasn’t vanished; it’s just been flattened into spectacle.
And yes, I admit it: I read this because a YouTuber told me to.
Which might be the most honest thing about the entire experience.
The book itself? Loud, eager… and strangely hollow.
It wants to shock, but rarely unsettles.
It wants to provoke, but often just poses.
It wants depth — and settles for aesthetic.
You can sense ambition everywhere.
You can also sense how rarely it lands.
This isn’t a novel that earns reverence.
It begs for it.
★★½ — for energy, nerve, and at least trying not to be polite.
Not every magician raises the dead.
Some just set off smoke machines
and hope the room goes dark enough not to notice.
Proust dressed Swann’s desire in Botticelli.
Dostoyevsky let faces rot into symbols.
Zeischegg… gestures toward the museum and ends up at the souvenir stand.
One of his characters is introduced through pop-iconography — Azalea Banks, naked, drenched in milk in Playboy. Desire hasn’t vanished; it’s just been flattened into spectacle.
And yes, I admit it: I read this because a YouTuber told me to.
Which might be the most honest thing about the entire experience.
The book itself? Loud, eager… and strangely hollow.
It wants to shock, but rarely unsettles.
It wants to provoke, but often just poses.
It wants depth — and settles for aesthetic.
You can sense ambition everywhere.
You can also sense how rarely it lands.
This isn’t a novel that earns reverence.
It begs for it.
★★½ — for energy, nerve, and at least trying not to be polite.
Not every magician raises the dead.
Some just set off smoke machines
and hope the room goes dark enough not to notice.
February 25, 2025
Ah, so this book was birthed into existence by "Apocalypse Party," a publishing company whose logo looks like it was ripped straight from the cover of a death metal album. I had the pleasure of reading another one of their literary abominations, Gary J. Shipley's So Beautiful and Elastic. From what I can tell, this publisher seems to have a penchant for unleashing superedgy books upon the world—"edgy" in a good way, I suppose. The edginess actually has some substance to it, and the reading experience is always worth the patience it takes me to decipher what the ever loving fuck is going on.
Now, let's talk about "The Magician." I think it's kind of a mixed bag, really. The first part of the book had me thinking I was in for a thrilling revenge story, but then the whole thing took a sharp turn down a completely different path, and to be perfectly candid, I'm not entirely sure what the hell the whole thing is about. Also, there's an excessive amount of gay blowjobs and people swallowing semen towards the end of the book (which might be part of the main character's persona or something...fucked if I know).
That being out of the way, shit, I don't really know...let's say that the first half was a five-star read, whereas the second half of the book was a bit too cryptic for my taste. All in all, this was a 3.5-star novel, generously rounded up to 4.
Next.
Now, let's talk about "The Magician." I think it's kind of a mixed bag, really. The first part of the book had me thinking I was in for a thrilling revenge story, but then the whole thing took a sharp turn down a completely different path, and to be perfectly candid, I'm not entirely sure what the hell the whole thing is about. Also, there's an excessive amount of gay blowjobs and people swallowing semen towards the end of the book (which might be part of the main character's persona or something...fucked if I know).
That being out of the way, shit, I don't really know...let's say that the first half was a five-star read, whereas the second half of the book was a bit too cryptic for my taste. All in all, this was a 3.5-star novel, generously rounded up to 4.
Next.
August 2, 2022
4.5 ⭐️
A bizarre, exhausting, yet genuinely tender and touching autofiction trip through spirituality, parental love, and flawed obsession. “A Jodorowsky psychomagic journey by way of Bret Easton Ellis with a tiny sprinkling of A Serbian Film” is what pulsed through my mind more than once while reading.
The story, one of fixation, injury, and internal growth, takes many twists that at first seem frayed and unrelated but soon escalate into sublime and genuinely frightening heights. The last 40 or so pages sort of dwindled the heightened emotion and investment I felt through most of the book, but even their clumsy uncertainty seems part of the overall message of broken and unappeasable desire.
Zeischegg’s prose is addictive, terse, and pries with clean jabs directly at the nerve of circumstance. This is genuinely one of the most gripping and fulfilling novels I have read in a long time.
A bizarre, exhausting, yet genuinely tender and touching autofiction trip through spirituality, parental love, and flawed obsession. “A Jodorowsky psychomagic journey by way of Bret Easton Ellis with a tiny sprinkling of A Serbian Film” is what pulsed through my mind more than once while reading.
The story, one of fixation, injury, and internal growth, takes many twists that at first seem frayed and unrelated but soon escalate into sublime and genuinely frightening heights. The last 40 or so pages sort of dwindled the heightened emotion and investment I felt through most of the book, but even their clumsy uncertainty seems part of the overall message of broken and unappeasable desire.
Zeischegg’s prose is addictive, terse, and pries with clean jabs directly at the nerve of circumstance. This is genuinely one of the most gripping and fulfilling novels I have read in a long time.
March 1, 2020
I am feeling very, very sick right now (maybe that's the right state of mind and body to appreciate this book's aesthetic?) but will try to muddle my way through a review of this book, which I very much enjoyed (if "enjoyed" is the right word) and which could be classified as an existential pornographic supernatural Gothic horror novel, and which involves a Californian ex-porn actor (sharing the same first name as the author, who is also a former porn actor) getting mixed up in both the Christian faith and also the occult (to be more specific, Satanism). In a recent clandestine publication the late Simon Morris compared the book to Bret Easton Ellis and I can kind of see it in the prose style (I was reminded in particular not of Ellis' Los Angeles novels, oddly enough, but instead his underrated supernatural horror novel LUNAR PARK, which also features a demon-haunted narrator named after the author who tries to turn his life around and lead a normal existence, only to pervert/infest both his loved ones and his immediate surroundings). Thing is, unlike Ellis' narrators in general, here at least one has some sympathy for the narrator, who is at least capable of feeling empathy for other people and who has spiritual aspirations (though it could be argued that his motivations for getting into both Christianity and occultism are suspect, and seem driven less by spiritual needs and more a desire for financial stability, wealth, and pedestrian love concerns... ah well, maybe it's the thought that counts, give him a participation trophy). Rather as I read it I kept thinking of J.K. Huysmans and my favorite novel of his, Là-bas, which also featured an author proxy who finds himself torn between Christianity and black magic. At the risk of sounding fatuous, you could almost make the claim that THE MAGICIAN is a more brutal and primal Là-bas updated for the social media age, formatted in such a way so that the terse paragraphs resemble twisted tweets from some Tartarean Twitter feed (shut up spellcheck, "Tartarean" is so a legit word). And though there are some bleakly funny moments, and even some glimmers of hope present (one of the more touching scenes of the book involves the narrator discovering the biblical Book of Job for the first time, which is fitting as he himself comes off as a Job-like character), for the most part reading the book feels like voluntarily plunging oneself into a suffocating nightmare of demonic possession, sexual depravity, and body horror. It also confirms the theory that California is a spiritual abyss best avoided, and if one has to experience it than be sure to do it by proxy (Joan Didion essays, GTA: SAN ANDREAS, old Eagles albums... pick your poison, the options are endless).
May 25, 2020
I could hardly bring myself to put this one down. It completely took over my life during the course of the day or so it took me to make my way through all of its dark corridors. I’m not usually such a quick reader, but I had a lot of free time this weekend and this really ticked all of my boxes: it was fast-paced, unpredictable, brutal, deeply surreal, disturbing, and wonderfully written. PLUS there was also a peculiar tenderness about it that I was shocked to encounter given the troubling subject matter, and I was even more shocked to find that tone believably sustained as the story itself became more twisted and ugly. That’s probably the quality I admire most, in the end, about The Magician: its surprising tenderness.
This was my first Christopher Zeischegg novel and it certainly won’t be my last. He’s the real deal, a writer I will be keeping a close eye on going forward. And kudos as usual to Amphetamine Sulphate for introducing me to a great new (to me anyway) voice in modern literature.
Excellent stuff. Highly recommended to anybody who need some highly imaginative, unique literary terror in their lives.
This was my first Christopher Zeischegg novel and it certainly won’t be my last. He’s the real deal, a writer I will be keeping a close eye on going forward. And kudos as usual to Amphetamine Sulphate for introducing me to a great new (to me anyway) voice in modern literature.
Excellent stuff. Highly recommended to anybody who need some highly imaginative, unique literary terror in their lives.
March 6, 2022
One of the best modern horror novels I’ve ever read. Unflinchingly brutal, heartbreaking, anxiety inducing. Alarmingly real, black magick and all. Incredible, gripping pace too.
March 6, 2024
The Magician is an essential occult porn noir from the insalubrious mind of Christopher Zeischegg. His alter ego narrator travels an evocatively rendered landscape of deserted LA backlots, haunted by the manifestation of pure evil and memories of a drug-addled ex-partner. All this is told in a super pared-down style that makes for a compelling read and is a major highlight of 2020 thus far.
March 3, 2020
Probably my favorite AS book yet. A bizarre and often tender journey of revenge and redemption. Will easily be one of my 2020 favorites.
November 5, 2024
I have read all of Christopher Zeischegg's books. I think this might be his best yet, and this is probably my favorite read of 2024.
September 19, 2021
If you're checking this to see if you should read it, the answer is yes. Go buy a copy and consume/be consumed immediately.
This book is a face melter. I don't know what else to say about it, besides that the raw power in these pages is probably dangerous. It's a lovely tale of redemption wrapped up in an occult nightmare that threatens the integrity of the reader's mind. Don't be fooled by the lurid subject matter: Underneath all the curses, gore, drugs, and sex there is something deeply human about this book.
To say more is to ruin the experience. Go score a copy, and fast.
This book is a face melter. I don't know what else to say about it, besides that the raw power in these pages is probably dangerous. It's a lovely tale of redemption wrapped up in an occult nightmare that threatens the integrity of the reader's mind. Don't be fooled by the lurid subject matter: Underneath all the curses, gore, drugs, and sex there is something deeply human about this book.
To say more is to ruin the experience. Go score a copy, and fast.
December 26, 2024
The ending made me feel yucky and betrayed. But I think the evil slow burn was effective, if it was intended to be read that way, which is not really anyone’s business since that’s just how it affected me. The reason I give three stars is just that it seemed like there were whole stretches where very little was going on and I wondered if it needed to be 400+ pages. I’m not trying to nit pick and be overly critical but if it could have been compressed a little more, and that horrifying energy of the downturn at the end had been harnessed a little more, I would rate it higher. I resent a little bit the price of the book, both money-wise and spiritually (hmmm), in exchange for an incomplete, uneven payoff. I’m saying I liked the ending, or better put, I acknowledge the sickening feeling of where the narrator ends up, more than the execution of the whole novel as a novel. But I’m not sure I could say how it could have been told differently exactly, seeing that it seemed to need to hew close to autofictional source material. So I’m not sure what I’m saying, other than some of it appealed to me and I got myself into this by being curious and buying the book after the hype-blast I saw. I would read another book by Zeischegg I think. I think I’m just in the mood for something a little more artful and inventive, but that’s my fault not the author’s.
November 28, 2024
I really tried, guys. I read the 435 pages of this thing looking for that shock value and sweet subversion everyone seems to be talking about and, honestly, outside of some of the most disinterested sex scenes I've ever read I was left with very little to enjoy.
To be fair, this is a weird structure problem. The main conflict of the novel is resolved by the halfway point and from then on, The Magician turns into what feels like a thinly veiled autofiction about the most useless dude in the world. Part of this is on me. Part of this is that I have a bone to pick with selfish and cowardly protagonists and it's a matter of taste, but second half of this novel is, uh, not dynamic. I get the underlying themes of religion, devotion and invisible forces controlling one's life, but having them applied for over two hundred pages to the story of a thirtysomething guy not being helpful around his sick mother gets painful after a while.
I don't care how groundbreaking you sell your novel to be, reading is a bilately act of good faith. If the creator and the consumer aren't working together, one of them will check out at some point and I did. If The Magician was 150 shorter than it is, I would've probably ranked it four stars. But it became an endurance run after a while.
To be fair, this is a weird structure problem. The main conflict of the novel is resolved by the halfway point and from then on, The Magician turns into what feels like a thinly veiled autofiction about the most useless dude in the world. Part of this is on me. Part of this is that I have a bone to pick with selfish and cowardly protagonists and it's a matter of taste, but second half of this novel is, uh, not dynamic. I get the underlying themes of religion, devotion and invisible forces controlling one's life, but having them applied for over two hundred pages to the story of a thirtysomething guy not being helpful around his sick mother gets painful after a while.
I don't care how groundbreaking you sell your novel to be, reading is a bilately act of good faith. If the creator and the consumer aren't working together, one of them will check out at some point and I did. If The Magician was 150 shorter than it is, I would've probably ranked it four stars. But it became an endurance run after a while.
April 11, 2020
I had a lot of ambivalence about this book when I first read it; the set up is great, but then i felt it just kind of trailed off into meandering daily agonies with a vaguely demonic backdrop and a pay off that came too late and fell slightly short.
The three stars represents my feelings on a first read. They’re arbitrary.
After reading Zeischegg’s essay in the Amphetamine Sulphate newsletter and watching the short film that comes as a companion piece to the book I’ve changed my feelings towards The Magician. It’s something to be experienced within a context. It falls into a realm of entertainment that I would also put the work of the Vienna Aktionists, Grey Wolves, IRM, Artaud, and films like August Underground and Angst. Not something to consume for any kind of feel good factor. Not something to consume under every circumstance.
I wouldn’t describe it as “difficult art”, it’s not difficult at all, but it is art that doesn’t appear to set out to satisfy its consumers on any level.
The three stars represents my feelings on a first read. They’re arbitrary.
After reading Zeischegg’s essay in the Amphetamine Sulphate newsletter and watching the short film that comes as a companion piece to the book I’ve changed my feelings towards The Magician. It’s something to be experienced within a context. It falls into a realm of entertainment that I would also put the work of the Vienna Aktionists, Grey Wolves, IRM, Artaud, and films like August Underground and Angst. Not something to consume for any kind of feel good factor. Not something to consume under every circumstance.
I wouldn’t describe it as “difficult art”, it’s not difficult at all, but it is art that doesn’t appear to set out to satisfy its consumers on any level.
April 28, 2022
"All I knew was that the sky offered plenty to look at. It brought about a vision, a daydream seen at night."
May 7, 2025
"Andrea's gore was dark red, nearly brown, and smelled of meat and piss. She must have wet herself on account of all the drugs. She'd taken the only framed picture we had of us together, smashed the glass, and smeared the photo of her face with blood so that I appeared next to a misshapen glob of plasma. Of course, she'd left herself to rot on top of it all. Her body was displayed on the picture, sheet, and mattress."
The Magician is what I imagine it's like to have intensive surgery while being wide awake and denied pain relief. It is, I think, only marginally more comfortable than taking an ice-pick to the brain. This book feels intrusive and unpleasant, it forces its way down your throat, into your soul, and demands that you gaze upon ruin and devastation. How strange and weird and bizarre, it feels like having the ever loving shit beaten out of you, but, at the same time, feels like being blasted out of your mind, completely on another fucking planet. The Magician is a novel that's a haze of narcotic regret, hedonistic wonder and heaps of good old-fashioned nihilism, too. A complete, and total spiritual awakening, a biblical event more than it is a book, this shit is fucking wonderful.
This is more than a book, it's a tidal wave intent on completely obliterating us all. Experiencing it will transform you, it'll alter your brain chemistry and realign your soul. The horror of The Magician is something so intimate and personal and it all feels really rather desperate and miserable. The Magician is intensely contradictory, always in defiance of itself - it's a strangely religious novel for something that feels so heretical and Godless, it's depressing and disgusting, and yet there's such tenderness, I mean, this is a novel about a struggling ex porn star on his search for faith. As much as this is about religion and drugs and addiction, it's also about passion and obsession. Utterly sublime, The Magician is fueled entirely by craving and desire.
There's something so feral, so primal about the way Zeischegg writes, reminiscent of the best work by Cooper and Ellis. Genuinely one of the most rivetting and interesting books I've ever had the pleasure of reading. It's a book that takes a heavy amount of patience, it's something that requires dedication, you simply must pay attention to its shifts and subtleties. It almost feels wrong, to be allowed to read a book this candid and personal. Extremely brutal and very, very surreal, this is the exact kind of book that only seems to get better if you're not in your right mind, you do have to be a little unhinged to enjoy this - it's an ugly thing, nasty, alarming and horrendous, yet somehow it still manages to be so unflinchingly lovely.
"I stared above me and saw patterns in the stars. They might have been constellations. I wasn't sure. I'd never paid attention to astronomy or things like that. All I knew was that the sky offered plenty to look at. It brought about a vision, like a daydream seen at night."
The Magician is what I imagine it's like to have intensive surgery while being wide awake and denied pain relief. It is, I think, only marginally more comfortable than taking an ice-pick to the brain. This book feels intrusive and unpleasant, it forces its way down your throat, into your soul, and demands that you gaze upon ruin and devastation. How strange and weird and bizarre, it feels like having the ever loving shit beaten out of you, but, at the same time, feels like being blasted out of your mind, completely on another fucking planet. The Magician is a novel that's a haze of narcotic regret, hedonistic wonder and heaps of good old-fashioned nihilism, too. A complete, and total spiritual awakening, a biblical event more than it is a book, this shit is fucking wonderful.
This is more than a book, it's a tidal wave intent on completely obliterating us all. Experiencing it will transform you, it'll alter your brain chemistry and realign your soul. The horror of The Magician is something so intimate and personal and it all feels really rather desperate and miserable. The Magician is intensely contradictory, always in defiance of itself - it's a strangely religious novel for something that feels so heretical and Godless, it's depressing and disgusting, and yet there's such tenderness, I mean, this is a novel about a struggling ex porn star on his search for faith. As much as this is about religion and drugs and addiction, it's also about passion and obsession. Utterly sublime, The Magician is fueled entirely by craving and desire.
"The presence neared. I glanced in its direction. Instead of human feet or shoes, I saw a heifer's cloven hoof. Two hooves, in fact. The figure stood upright, draped in satin to its ankles. Curious and bewildered, I stared at the length of its body. The creature had the face of a dog, hollowed eyes, the ears of an ass. Horns stuck up from the top of its head. The edge of the monstrosity bled into the night, as if its skin were liquid, expanding and contracting with my breath."
There's something so feral, so primal about the way Zeischegg writes, reminiscent of the best work by Cooper and Ellis. Genuinely one of the most rivetting and interesting books I've ever had the pleasure of reading. It's a book that takes a heavy amount of patience, it's something that requires dedication, you simply must pay attention to its shifts and subtleties. It almost feels wrong, to be allowed to read a book this candid and personal. Extremely brutal and very, very surreal, this is the exact kind of book that only seems to get better if you're not in your right mind, you do have to be a little unhinged to enjoy this - it's an ugly thing, nasty, alarming and horrendous, yet somehow it still manages to be so unflinchingly lovely.
"I stared above me and saw patterns in the stars. They might have been constellations. I wasn't sure. I'd never paid attention to astronomy or things like that. All I knew was that the sky offered plenty to look at. It brought about a vision, like a daydream seen at night."
September 14, 2020
Incredible
Read
January 14, 2025DNF 238/478 Deutsch Ausgabe Festa Verlag 2024
January 29, 2025
Based on previous reviews, I went into this only knowing it had horror/occult vibes, at times was reminiscent of Dennis Cooper’s writing (big fan of the book “The Sluts”), and was written by an ex-pornstar. All those elements were more than enough for me for me to give The Magician a shot!
In the first hundred pages or so of this devastatingly bleak and occasionally beautiful novel, I gradually realized it was semi-autobiographical. Zeischegg naming his main character “Christopher” was the biggest hint that there were bits of truth sprinkled throughout the horror and magick-fueled story. Like some other readers, I have no idea how much of The Magician is fabrication, but I definitely hope Zeischegg didn’t have literal demons to contend with, figurative ones are trouble enough!
The hellish odyssey our unfortunate protagonist is dragged through kept me thoroughly strapped in while also hoping for moments of respite. Thankfully, it wasn’t all gloom and doom. There were some surprisingly tender and heartwarming scenes that juxtaposed nicely with the flashes of brutal violence and dark magic. Going into this, I wasn’t expecting Christianity to play such a positive role for the protagonist, but it didn’t feel saccharine or forced. It was a grounded kind of religious representation which was certainly refreshing compared to the more vocal and obnoxious portrayals of the religion. As an agnostic, I was surprised by the salving effect those quiet moments the main character had while figuring out his faith.
As I was reading this, I wondered how Zeischegg’s writing on the adult film industry would compare to a story I’m working on involving the porn industry. Obviously, with his previous insider experience, he has the vastly superior perspective while I cover my lack of knowledge with absurdism, fantastical elements, and mild understanding of the industry from just existing on the Internet. It was a silly exercise since both novels couldn’t be further apart content-wise, but it just felt a little like kismet that I stumbled upon a gritty occult novel about a former pornstar while I was writing a horror comedy involving quirky pornstars and extraterrestrials. That probably sounds absurd and nonsensical, but I’m an absurd and nonsensical guy!
Back to the point of this review, if any of what I said tickled your fancy, give this unique magical realist tome a read! Just be sure to prep yourself for some HEAVY shit! Plenty of haunting images throughout the book will definitely be seared into my mind for a while. Zeischegg’s prose is fast, brutal, and easy to get absorbed in. I can’t say I’m familiar with his previous career’s material, but I hope he’s finding more joy and fulfillment with his current gig. Now if you’ll excuse me, I gotta shower some of this grime off!
In the first hundred pages or so of this devastatingly bleak and occasionally beautiful novel, I gradually realized it was semi-autobiographical. Zeischegg naming his main character “Christopher” was the biggest hint that there were bits of truth sprinkled throughout the horror and magick-fueled story. Like some other readers, I have no idea how much of The Magician is fabrication, but I definitely hope Zeischegg didn’t have literal demons to contend with, figurative ones are trouble enough!
The hellish odyssey our unfortunate protagonist is dragged through kept me thoroughly strapped in while also hoping for moments of respite. Thankfully, it wasn’t all gloom and doom. There were some surprisingly tender and heartwarming scenes that juxtaposed nicely with the flashes of brutal violence and dark magic. Going into this, I wasn’t expecting Christianity to play such a positive role for the protagonist, but it didn’t feel saccharine or forced. It was a grounded kind of religious representation which was certainly refreshing compared to the more vocal and obnoxious portrayals of the religion. As an agnostic, I was surprised by the salving effect those quiet moments the main character had while figuring out his faith.
As I was reading this, I wondered how Zeischegg’s writing on the adult film industry would compare to a story I’m working on involving the porn industry. Obviously, with his previous insider experience, he has the vastly superior perspective while I cover my lack of knowledge with absurdism, fantastical elements, and mild understanding of the industry from just existing on the Internet. It was a silly exercise since both novels couldn’t be further apart content-wise, but it just felt a little like kismet that I stumbled upon a gritty occult novel about a former pornstar while I was writing a horror comedy involving quirky pornstars and extraterrestrials. That probably sounds absurd and nonsensical, but I’m an absurd and nonsensical guy!
Back to the point of this review, if any of what I said tickled your fancy, give this unique magical realist tome a read! Just be sure to prep yourself for some HEAVY shit! Plenty of haunting images throughout the book will definitely be seared into my mind for a while. Zeischegg’s prose is fast, brutal, and easy to get absorbed in. I can’t say I’m familiar with his previous career’s material, but I hope he’s finding more joy and fulfillment with his current gig. Now if you’ll excuse me, I gotta shower some of this grime off!
May 6, 2024
"What could I do but respond with more of my lies?"
You never know whats real or not in this hallucinogenic slow burn about blood and magick. Modern, metaphysical and mysterious.
You never know whats real or not in this hallucinogenic slow burn about blood and magick. Modern, metaphysical and mysterious.
January 22, 2025
A fugue state infected with an unnameable sadness.
The Magician is an odd bird. There’s not a good tagline that could encompass it or a genre in which it fits.
Our protagonist is weak and vulnerable, increasingly lost to the world (and himself) and stripped of agency. Even in his moments of misdoing, you get the sense that he is really the helpless victim the universe has decided to swallow up.
The quest for redemption doesn’t seem to uncover a wellspring of strength. If you lose yourself, how do you find yourself again? Can you? What are you supposed to do after you dig yourself out of the pit?
The last few chapters of the book, after the climatic action, are subtle but speak so loudly. You can’t flip a switch to make your life better. It’s an uncomfortable, painful acceptance of life. That’s what made me feel the most weird.
The Magician is an odd bird. There’s not a good tagline that could encompass it or a genre in which it fits.
Our protagonist is weak and vulnerable, increasingly lost to the world (and himself) and stripped of agency. Even in his moments of misdoing, you get the sense that he is really the helpless victim the universe has decided to swallow up.
The quest for redemption doesn’t seem to uncover a wellspring of strength. If you lose yourself, how do you find yourself again? Can you? What are you supposed to do after you dig yourself out of the pit?
The last few chapters of the book, after the climatic action, are subtle but speak so loudly. You can’t flip a switch to make your life better. It’s an uncomfortable, painful acceptance of life. That’s what made me feel the most weird.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
February 27, 2022
Felt like a limited series on hbo or something, but as a novel.
Episodic in its pacing. Strong dialogue throughout. Vivid bit by bit action descriptions. Paragraphs and dialogue are broken down on the page with lots of blank space. Liberal use of the paragraph break. An engaging and confident style though that kept my attention for 400+ pages, though I do feel this starts to sag in the middle. Could’ve used a little more editing around the 300 page mark. Maybe pushed to condense/cut this down 50 or so pages.
Well developed characters. Leans into some tropes but builds on them in smart ways. Fun, dare I say page turner, of a read.
Episodic in its pacing. Strong dialogue throughout. Vivid bit by bit action descriptions. Paragraphs and dialogue are broken down on the page with lots of blank space. Liberal use of the paragraph break. An engaging and confident style though that kept my attention for 400+ pages, though I do feel this starts to sag in the middle. Could’ve used a little more editing around the 300 page mark. Maybe pushed to condense/cut this down 50 or so pages.
Well developed characters. Leans into some tropes but builds on them in smart ways. Fun, dare I say page turner, of a read.
March 24, 2020
Wow. I think this may be my favorite of all of Zeischegg’s books so far. The stuff his brain comes up with fascinates me.
July 22, 2020
Intense, engrossing and dark read. I dreamed about it afterwards. The Magician is a thick book but reads at a quick pace due to the writing style and many action scenes. The content is shocking and resembles a horror novel. I found myself empathizing with the narrator and feeling his pain, getting into his head, which made the events of the plot more terrifying, enthralling, or depressing. There is a sense of humor underneath the grim events that play out, which saved it from being too morose. I enjoyed the interchange of the mundane and the occult. The Magician reveals evil but does not revel in it – rather I found myself on a ride with the narrator who is ultimately trying to fix things and better his life when faced with trauma and decay.
August 23, 2020
The Magician shines in its representation of social media and porntubes. The few paragraphs describing these are absolutely brilliant, which unfortunately are too few and far between. Otherwise it’s what you would expect from the summary. A lot less shocking and intense than the companion short film promises - more of a study of total ineptitude and phlegmaticness than occultism - but you simply can’t stop reading to discover the depth of incompetence the protagonist will reach.
Read
September 26, 2020I couldn't put it down; mind-shattering horror and a lot thinking about of religion and evil.
November 22, 2025
My thoughts on The Magician by Christopher Zeischegg:::::
Chris, our main character, is in a bad relationship with a drug addicted, self harming woman. She has a sugar daddy on the side that's providing her with money and drugs.
Our main character decides that he should join an Al-Anon group to seek help and guidance. There he runs into an ex coworker. They previously met each other while making a porn movie. Our main character used to be a pornstar but gave it up a while back. Now he edits porn for a living.
He keeps running into his ex co-star and wants to see if they can be friends. She's not a very nice person. She takes his friendly gestures as him being aggressive. She maces him, stuffs him into her car, drives him to her apartment, steals some of his blood, and tells him the next few days are gonna really suck, like really bad, for him.
She wasn't exaggerating. She might have under sold it a bit.
This book has an aura. The cover art is menacing as fuck. The beginning of the book had me nervous, it's pretty hardcore. I had no idea where it was gonna go or how depraved it was going to become. I was a bit shocked when it turned out to be fairly tame. There are crazy things that happen but there's also a plot line with the main character discovering that he's kind of into Protestant Christianity. It happens very organically and not out of place. It's an interesting juxtaposition with the hard core violent black magic happening sparsely throughout.
It's a fun, fast paced, oddly relatable tale of learning the absolute hardest way. Trying new things and nearly dying.
Chris, our main character, is in a bad relationship with a drug addicted, self harming woman. She has a sugar daddy on the side that's providing her with money and drugs.
Our main character decides that he should join an Al-Anon group to seek help and guidance. There he runs into an ex coworker. They previously met each other while making a porn movie. Our main character used to be a pornstar but gave it up a while back. Now he edits porn for a living.
He keeps running into his ex co-star and wants to see if they can be friends. She's not a very nice person. She takes his friendly gestures as him being aggressive. She maces him, stuffs him into her car, drives him to her apartment, steals some of his blood, and tells him the next few days are gonna really suck, like really bad, for him.
She wasn't exaggerating. She might have under sold it a bit.
This book has an aura. The cover art is menacing as fuck. The beginning of the book had me nervous, it's pretty hardcore. I had no idea where it was gonna go or how depraved it was going to become. I was a bit shocked when it turned out to be fairly tame. There are crazy things that happen but there's also a plot line with the main character discovering that he's kind of into Protestant Christianity. It happens very organically and not out of place. It's an interesting juxtaposition with the hard core violent black magic happening sparsely throughout.
It's a fun, fast paced, oddly relatable tale of learning the absolute hardest way. Trying new things and nearly dying.
August 27, 2020
Further solidifying that Christopher Zeischegg is one of my favorite authors, his 4th fiction novel The Magician makes a great companion piece to what was previously my favorite book of his, probably the darkest story I have ever read, The Wolves That Live In Skin And Space. And whether or not he agrees, I see his books as the only ones I’ve read which exist in the same spiritual realm as my own novel, Warship Satan. If you dug that, I suggest you fuck with The Magician. The primary difference in our writing is that there is much less humor in his - it’s committed to its own stark bleakness in an impressive way I don’t think I could ever match.
I was grateful to get my hands on a copy of this before a trip from L.A. to D.C., as the book’s full length perfectly covered my airplane travel time, 5 hours of reading on the way, and 5 on the way back. It was quite the experience to move from reading Fante’s acclaimed Ask The Dust, which I found miserable and vapid, to this, which was explosively intriguing from the very first page, and remained so throughout. You can always count on Zeischegg for a daring, unique view on things, and a focus on pockets of existence that most wouldn’t dare think about. While his style of writing is mostly very straightforward, that allows it to retain a very cinematic value - every image was crystal clear for me. The book begins as a morbid rollercoaster then slowly mutates into a slow burn of decay and deterioration - it’s very aware of it’s own structure, which exists with a thematic purpose.
This book took me on a ride I’ve never been on before. There were characters and scenarios that served as immensely effective nightmares I’d never experienced. These are things that will stick with me. If you’re craving a novel that’s unique, visceral, and outlandish, which is also written with great discipline, this masterwork of psychological terror is most certainly worth giving a chance. I give it a 10.
I was grateful to get my hands on a copy of this before a trip from L.A. to D.C., as the book’s full length perfectly covered my airplane travel time, 5 hours of reading on the way, and 5 on the way back. It was quite the experience to move from reading Fante’s acclaimed Ask The Dust, which I found miserable and vapid, to this, which was explosively intriguing from the very first page, and remained so throughout. You can always count on Zeischegg for a daring, unique view on things, and a focus on pockets of existence that most wouldn’t dare think about. While his style of writing is mostly very straightforward, that allows it to retain a very cinematic value - every image was crystal clear for me. The book begins as a morbid rollercoaster then slowly mutates into a slow burn of decay and deterioration - it’s very aware of it’s own structure, which exists with a thematic purpose.
This book took me on a ride I’ve never been on before. There were characters and scenarios that served as immensely effective nightmares I’d never experienced. These are things that will stick with me. If you’re craving a novel that’s unique, visceral, and outlandish, which is also written with great discipline, this masterwork of psychological terror is most certainly worth giving a chance. I give it a 10.
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