This is a satisfying thriller with the added dimension of a historical mystery. You will learn a lot about the Freemasons, the number eight, Algeria and chess, and you will also get embellished introductions to many historical figures of the time, including Catherine the Great, Robespierre, Talleyrand, Napoleon, Benedict Arnold, Marat and Jacques-Louis David.

I thought the heroines were both admirable, which is tricky in this genre. You want them to be intelligent but somehow sympathetic while they remain clueless for the longest time. And here I DO mean the longest time -- six hundred pages is too long for even an engaging thriller, though I would read other books by this author.

Katherine Neville is brilliant as is her story in The Eight. The book combines two interwoven plots and keeps you interested in both of them! This is one book that I never wanted to finish. I fell in love with the characters and felt that this book could go on and on and not bore me one bit.

This is the story of the Montglane Chess set, supposedly a gift to Charlemagne that held unimaginable power within, when he played he became obsessed to the point of near destruction. Upon his death his sons fought over the set which ends up getting built into the walls of an abbey to protect it as well as the world from it's power. The story takes place in two eras. One where they many historical figures are after the set which is being split up across the world and then in the 1970's when the set is being searched for (again).

Catherine Neville deftly weaves these two stories together, along with historical facts and wonderful characters.

I could read it over and over again (and I have - I think I just finished it for my 7th time)and still enjoy it. The writing was superb and the plot was original!

I especially enjoyed this book as my background is in banking, as is the main character's. I am an American woman, who started as a stockbroker back in the 1970's, when there were few women in the brokerage and banking areas. This book reminds me of what women went through in that time, especially with the "old boys' club" and "glass ceiling" types of problems. Yet this character is able to overcome all of that and pull off an incredibly thrilling finanacial caper. In the background, a romance develops with an absolutely dazzling, incredible man. So many incredible things happen in this book that it absolutely has to be termed a fantasy in addition addition to being a romantic financial thriller.

A thoroughly enjoyable "escape" book for every woman who has ever worked in business (or who has ever been frustrated by men's behavior in business). This is the first book I have read by this author, and I hope to read more!

Like so many readers I purchased The Magic Circle based on the strength of Ms. Neville's brilliant first novel, The Eight. That was, of course, a mistake.

The Magic Circle has many problems, beginning with the lack of a coherent and interesting plot. In its stead it seems as though Ms. Neville has written several disparate pieces of historical fiction, which sound suspiciously like lectures, interwoven with a weak and under-developed contemporary suspense. And if her lack of a story was not unfortunate enough, Ms. Neville's (many, many) characters are thinly drawn and completely uninteresting. There is no Mireille -- clever, beautiful and immortal; no Cat -- reluctant, heroic, and brilliant; no Talleyrand, no Solarin. Perhaps I was just tired by the end of the novel, but even it seemed to be a contrived and half-hearted attempt to interject some action and drama into the story ... and it didn't work.

Overall, The Magic Circle lacks focus. It reads as several incomplete books combined, incoherently, into one. I had the feeling throughout that the book was the result of an impending deadline and that it was not really the novel Ms. Neville intended to write. My only question is: where was Ms. Neville's editor?

Incidentally, having read the other readers reviews, it seems as though some witless cabal is inventing a dreary reaction against her book. Please note the preponderance of high reviews before this month, and the variety of the reviews before this month. Lately they seem all characterized by the same barely literate sentence fragments, key words, and one star rating, and a lack of ownership...a pattern that the managers of this board should investigate