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Murder By Illusion
Be careful what you wish for...
Failing stage illusionist Charlie Chilton is offered the opportunity of a lifetime by the mysterious Asmodeus Tchort.
Despite doubts that the deal ‘looks to good to be true’ Chilton accepts Tchort's offer.
The promised success soon follows but then something is amiss.
Chilton is haunted by savage nightmares - and gruesome murders dog his trail as he tours his new act around the country.
Has the magician become a murderer? And just who is the mysterious Asmodeus Tchort?
Murder By Illusion is a gripping novel of supernatural horror, possession and one man’s moral disintegration.
Giles Ekins trained as an architect in London. He is also the author of
To Hell and Back and Message From A Dead Girl. He lives in Sheffield.
528 pages, Hardcover
Published December 22, 2021
5 people want to read
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
August 1, 2019
(No spoilers... I didn't even get that far.)
The plot of this book sounded really interesting, and I was excited to start it. That excitement vanished as soon as I began reading the prologue, and saw the extent of the grammatical errors. This book is badly in need of a good editor, as is obvious from problems such as missing punctuation, leading to confusion when reading sentences. The prologue almost put me off, with it's distasteful and ultra-gory descriptions, but I went on to chapter one and two to try and get more into the book.
Far more troubling than any grammatical issues was the frequent casting of aspersions on women. From the little I read, the tone of the book was very misogynistic and derogative. For example, the prologue described women feeling sexually aroused while waiting for an execution (!), while in the following chapters there is an overly-lewd detailed description of the attire of a magician's assistant and a thought from the character that "even shaking my fanny is not going to wake this lot up". A few sentences later on, the character of the magician "stomps over to her and slashes at her buttocks with his silver ‘magic’ wand". Insinuating, crude and ugly remarks like this pepper the opening chapters, and that is never a good beginning. By today's standard of writing, it's offensive and quite frankly, lazy. There is also far too much time spent on long winded (and very depressing) scene setting, all of which is done with the same aforementioned errors in grammar/punctuation. This leads to a very choppy, dismal read, and I couldn't bring myself to want to read any more. Maybe the book gets better, but with such a poor start I can't see how.
The plot of this book sounded really interesting, and I was excited to start it. That excitement vanished as soon as I began reading the prologue, and saw the extent of the grammatical errors. This book is badly in need of a good editor, as is obvious from problems such as missing punctuation, leading to confusion when reading sentences. The prologue almost put me off, with it's distasteful and ultra-gory descriptions, but I went on to chapter one and two to try and get more into the book.
Far more troubling than any grammatical issues was the frequent casting of aspersions on women. From the little I read, the tone of the book was very misogynistic and derogative. For example, the prologue described women feeling sexually aroused while waiting for an execution (!), while in the following chapters there is an overly-lewd detailed description of the attire of a magician's assistant and a thought from the character that "even shaking my fanny is not going to wake this lot up". A few sentences later on, the character of the magician "stomps over to her and slashes at her buttocks with his silver ‘magic’ wand". Insinuating, crude and ugly remarks like this pepper the opening chapters, and that is never a good beginning. By today's standard of writing, it's offensive and quite frankly, lazy. There is also far too much time spent on long winded (and very depressing) scene setting, all of which is done with the same aforementioned errors in grammar/punctuation. This leads to a very choppy, dismal read, and I couldn't bring myself to want to read any more. Maybe the book gets better, but with such a poor start I can't see how.
Displaying 1 of 1 review