The Gift by Patrick O’Leary
Nine people attended this meeting. Eight had finished the book, and four had also read O’Leary’s prior book Door Number Three. Typically for O’Leary, The Gift is hard to describe succinctly. It’s a fantasy novel full of traditional tropes like a cursed prince, a woodcutter’s son, a quest, and dragons, To further complicate things, the book is structured like a set of fairy tales wrapped inside one another. And the plot is an ambitious story about the “last magic makers on Earth.”
We were impressed by this book’s ambitions and its many successes. The story is at times delightful, charming, and dark, and it is told in spirals and twists. And best of all, the spirals are wrapped together in a logical way that comes together