The Sons of Simeon are religious extremists in Israel. Their focus is finding and persecuting sorcerers. This not exactly in line with government law, but the government tends to look the other way. When a demonstration ends with a brutal murder, the empath Reed becomes the next target for the extremist groups. Reed has sorcerer friends and 'normie' friends, all looking for ways to protect the unlikely target. But Reed is the one who will need to protect his friends from the Sons of Simeon. And it gets trickier when Reed's focus becomes distracted because he falls madly in love.

This book ... this book just didn't do anything for me.

On the surface, this should be right up my alley of interest.  Alternate reality with sorcerers and empaths?  Yeah, I like that. A familiar yet unique location (I've never been to Israel). I like that, too.

There's some romance here, which is fine - I don't read sci-fi/fantasy for the romance, but don't mind it being there. This romance happens to be a gay romance, which isn't my thing, but people and emotions ... that's pretty universal.

But there are a couple of problems here. First, it's NOT a sci-fi/fantasy with some gay romance.  Our main character, Reed, seems overwhelmed with lust and this becomes a gay romance with shades sci-fi/fantasy overtones. There's a real subculture of these kinds of books, but I never expected to read this from a major sci-fi publisher.

The book tries to be an allegorical statement on oppression - making sure that we recognize the oppression in our own history, but it's so in-your-face that's it's not allegory.

The characters never drew me into the story and the world was not built to be very interesting. All that mattered was that a main character began pining for an ex-boyfriend early in the book and it never grows much from there.

This was an all-around disappointment.

Looking for a good book? The Heart of the Circle by Keren Landsman may appeal to a small circle of readers but you'll have to have some very specific reading interests to find this a worthy read.

I received a digital copy of this book from the publisher, through Netgalley, in exchange for an honest review.

This book was hard for me to get into, perhaps a little too sci-fi for my taste. Interesting idea but was not for me.

The Heart of the Circle is a contemporary speculative fiction about a version of the world where mages exist but are persecuted by a group of religious zealots called the Sons of Simeon.

The world-building in this book is scarce. There's a brief introduction to the different types of sorcerers, some elemental, others not, and how they relate to each other in this world where magic is normalized, but not necessarily accepted by all. At the same time, the world-building and "world conflict" aren't the point. The point are the pedestrian relationships between the main characters. Reed falls in love while his other friends are trying to steer him towards a future in which he lives. The friendships are deep, and it's so much more about the small moments they want to preserve: going to the pub or club, their mom coming over to meet significant others, what that one friend is really up to, etc. Reed and Lee's relationship had all the trappings of new love, plus an added layer in which they both can see the future through the eyes of a friend. The tension between living in fear and living every day like it's their last was tangible throughout.

They don't go out to defeat the Sons of Simeon and I loved how our characters weren't going to be the ones to fix it. There were definitely layers which might have gone over my head about the conflict in Israel in the present time, but I am absolutely not the authority to speak to those.

Definitely something which deals with the everyday despite allegorical conflicts and magic as a metaphor for the other.

I tried to get into this book but I really wasn't able to. It had an interesting premise but after 100 or so pages, I couldn't. After a certain point, I started having trouble keeping up with what's happening and the characters and decided not to push through.

I was a pretty big fan of this one! It was really cool to read an urban/low fantasy book set in Tel Aviv- it gave a breath of fresh air to a genre that can get repetitive. That being said, the focus of the book was definitely on the characters as much as the magic and that worked well since Keren Landsman wrote some great characters. I'd definitely be up for giving another book from this author a try!

The Heart of the Circle is a fantasy novel set in an alternate world version of Israel, where some people are born with the power of sorcery. These people are shunned and segregated from much of the rest of society.

The story centres around an empath, Reed, and his friends. There are attacks on sorcerors and they are being killed. Reed becomes involved in trying to find out who is behind these attacks, but he is also putting himself and his friends in danger.

I really like the concept of the alternate world this book is based in. There are various different types of sorcerors, who are born with their powers. They have formed their own kind of underground society since they are not always welcome in the company of the normies. I like the ideas the author had about having white doors and white sections of the bus to be used by sorcerors only as a way of separating them from other people. I think the discrimination against the sorcerors is easily relatable to our society and the discrimination many people have really suffered throughout history.

I also really liked the plot of the book. It wasn't particularly unique or different, but it was a solid idea - someone is killing sorcerors, and Reed and his friends were trying to find out who it was and stop them. There was also a bit of a love story going on for Reed, which added another important dimension to the book. Alongside that, a lot of the book followed Reed in his life. You learned about his work, daily life, his past, his family and friends, and this did make the book a lot more rich and deep. You truly felt like you knew Reed by the end of the book.

However, the pace of the book is very slow and it is pretty long. Although it was well written, descriptive and emotional, I found it quite hard to get through and it took me a while to read this book. I wouldn't say that I didn't enjoy it, but I was quite glad when I reached the end.  This is definitely more of a drama than a thriller, and if you like a hard hitting, fast paced book then this is not for you.

Reed is unable to hide the fact he is a "moodifier," one with the ability to take in someone's emotions or change them. People often throw their moods toward him and he is regularly treated like a second hand citizen. Regularly exploited and treated as a threat, Reed finds himself living as a waiter and trying to keep his head down when he isn't protesting for sorcerers' rights. His circle of friends are being targeted by a group of religious extremists and the Israeli government does nothing to protect those who have the powers of a sorcerer. When Reed's former love reappears, returning from the United States, he finds himself both emotionally entangled and trying to survive being a target from the Sons of Simeon, an extremist group out for blood. 

I greatly enjoyed that this book was set in Israel, rather than someplace like the United States. It is a fair reminder that extremist activities can take place anywhere. The message is clear about human beings fearing and poorly treating that which they do not understanding. Keren Landsman's Heart of the Circle is perfectly poignant for the current age, and through sometimes the parallels are scary, this is an incredible story to help train readers to have more empathy.

Heart of the Circle is available now from Angry Robot.

Keren Landsman’s The Heart of the Circle is set in a world like our own in which a fraction of the population are born sorcerers—people with extra abilities beyond the norm. Sorcerers are subdivided into elementalists and psychics—the former can control either air, water, fire or earth, and the latter are either empaths or seers. Empaths can feel and manipulate others’ emotions, while seers can see and manipulate possible futures.

The story takes place in present-day Tel Aviv, following Reed Katz, an empath, or ‘moody’ as the Israeli slang has it. Reed is not only a moody but a freelance ‘moodifier’, meaning he makes his living infusing art and literature with emotion—at least, when he’s not slinging coffees at the Sinkhole, a seafront cafe. The most important thing in Reed’s life is his best friend and roommate Daphne, a seer, or ‘damus’ (from Nostradamus, geddit?).

But life for sorcerers in Tel Aviv is getting more dangerous. While they’ve always been segregated from the normie population—different doors in public spaces and transport, separate areas and warning sounds—recently there have been a spate of killings targeting sorcerers’ protest rallies. And while the police stand by, the violence is only ramping up.

Landsman says in an interview that she was inspired to write The Heart of the Circle after a 16 year-old girl was killed at a Pride parade in Jerusalem. The queer analogue is certainly strong—sorcerers are treated as pariahs in every culture that’s mentioned in the book. What’s more, the main thread—the killings of sorcerers at protests—is itself wrapped around a queer love story.

However, it’s specifically because the story is a liberation narrative that I can’t help but take issue with the toothless rhetoric at its heart.

As I began reading The Heart of the Circle, I made some assumptions. The story is about members of a persecuted minority being targeted and murdered at demonstrations while they’re supposed to be protected by the police. Surely, surely, I thought, this book was going to contain a scathing critique of cops—cops at demos, cops at Pride, minority members of the force and the double-think that goes along with such opposing identities.

But I was wrong. The very worst thing you can say about the police force in The Heart of the Circle is that it’s ineffective. One of the main characters in the novel is Sherry, an earth elementalist as well as the cop heading up the investigation into the killings. While reading, I was always alert to the likelihood of her being corrupt, herself behind the terrorist attacks, but spoiler alert: she’s not. She is in fact presented as one of the most important and heroic characters in the novel. Even worse, Sherry’s politics are thoroughly assimilationist. She talks about how the onus should be on sorcerers to prove to ‘normies’ that they can be trusted, to earn their rights in society.

Which would be no more than I’d expect from a cop. But our main character, Reed, agrees wholeheartedly. The entire narrative places Sherry firmly in the right, never so much as questioning her or her ideas, even when they’re blatently bad, irresponsible, or plain old conservative.

As minority liberation narratives go, I don’t have much time for that. Not when we know cops deliberately allow killings of queer people to go uninvestigated. Not when we know how cops infiltrate and manipulate radical movements. In the whole messy history of human progress, when have the cops ever been on our side? (Hint: the answer is never.)

Another issue I had with The Heart of the Circle was technical: it simply dragged on too long. The plot’s not complicated—a community reeling from targeted murders on the one hand, a budding romance on the other. It should have been breathless, breakneck, alive with anticipation both good and bad. With the threat of death looming over our characters, extended scenes of TV watching and family dinners seemed to dissipate the tension and muddy the storyline.

Even when climactic events do happen, they don’t go anywhere. Just past the halfway point, a rally takes place. Everyone is on tenterhooks. Everyone’s preparing for a battle. But then the scene just… winds down. Nothing changes. We go back to limbo, waiting for the main event.

The love story at the heart of the book suffers from a similar problem. There are no real obstacles separating Reed and his love interest, so when they fall for one another, they hook up—it’s as simple as that. Since this happens early on, the events of the rest of the story are counterpointed by love scenes. While its nice to see a queer couple getting to be (more or less) happy, there was no growth, no achievement, and so the scenes felt meandering rather than vital parts of the book.

(I was, at least, happy to discover that this book does not Bury Its Gays.)

Don’t get me wrong—I love slice-of-life fiction. I grew up devouring fanfic alongside published fiction. I adore reading characters I love spending time with one another and connecting—or even disconnecting, if we wanna get sad on main—in meaningful ways.

And I did love these characters. Landsman really nails the vibe of a community of young people in an urban setting. I just wanted to see more significant interaction. I felt the choice of first person perspective led to too close a focus on Reed’s actions and Reed’s feelings, whereas I wanted to see more of Daphne, more of Matthew and Lee and even Sherry.

Ultimately, I felt like The Heart of the Circle could have been a lot better. The central conceit, of sorcerers as an oppressed demographic, has hella mileage. Tel Aviv as a setting was a delight to read. But the opportunities to really lean into the themes of the novel seemed to be missed. I followed Reed all the way to the end of the story because I so wanted to know what happens to him, because I did genuinely care about the characters in this book—and I was somewhat disappointed.

The premise of this book was really intriguing, but unfortunately for me, the execution just didn't work. It tells the story of Reed, an empath living in Tel Aviv who finds himself embroiled in  battle against the Sons of Simion who are targeting sorcerers. Firstly, the basic plot here is very confused and convoluted, so much so that I genuinely don't know what the Sons of Simeon were actually trying to accomplish. The prose feels disjointed and the narrative is just quite boring. Although the book isn't that long, it felt very long when reading and I just didn't get invested in any of the characters because I couldn't follow the thread of the narrative. Overall, I think the ideas within the narrative are interesting, but it is really difficult to parse them out and the reading experience left a lot to be desired.
I received a free copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for a fair and honest review.

I tried several times to get into this book, and just couldn't make it happen. The sense of space in the world building and the characters felt muddled, things seem to happen without much thought other than for something to happen on the page, and although some major things happen the tone feels a bit suffocated, like no one's really feeling anything. 

I didn't finish. I wanted to love it, as some of the ideas seemed interesting... but I just couldn't read it.

The Heart of the Circle by Keren Landsman is a timely Israel-set urban fantasy novel in translation. I can't quite decide if I particularly enjoyed this one or not. What I did like about it is the magic. Otherwise though I wish we had a better sense of the world the story is set in and if I were more interested in the characters themselves.

My thanks to Angry Robot for an eARC via NetGalley of Keren Landsman’s ’The Heart of the Circle’ in exchange for an honest review. 

Set in Israel, this is an urban fantasy in which sorcerers exist and are campaigning for equal rites. Meanwhile, a group of religious extremists, named the Sons of Simeon, are persecuting them while the government turns a blind eye. It’s narrator, Reed, is an empath who becomes their next target.

Although I was drawn by its premise and striking cover art, sadly this just wasn’t a good fit for me. It seemed far too focused on dialogue between characters and I didn’t really get a sense of the world or magical system Landsman was portraying. It felt like I was plonked down in this setting and I found that I needed more exposition. 

I suspect that it is a novel that is more suited to a different readership than myself. It felt too much like tuning in on a reality show about a group of hip twenty-somethings and their complicated love lives. Just not my thing with or without a magical component. 

I did take a few runs at it, hoping that if I continued reading that it might grab me a few chapters in or I would become more invested in the characters but I just didn’t. So it was a DNF at 45%.

I won’t post this review to commercial sites due to not finishing. Clearly scanning other reviews there are readers that did find it a compelling story.

Reading this story is like coming into the middle of a movie and not being allowed to ask any questions about what's happened before. I more or less understood what was happening right there and then, but there's all this history going on that I didn't follow and was never explained. I know this is a translated novel, but the very Israeli things were never explained either. I'm afraid I DNF'd this one after a lot of picking it up and putting it down.

The only word I can find for this book is enthralling, once I started I was hooked and couldn't put it down.
Sometimes I found the plot slow paced, sometimes I couldn't connect to the characters but I never put it down because there was that unknown "something" that made me turn pages.
I can say I loved it, it's entertaining but at the same time it's full of food for thought.
It's set in Israel but it could be any city in the world, it talks about sorcerers but it could also talk about the current world situation. I think this the unknown quantity that made me keep on reading.
On a general level I loved the character development, the complex and fascinating world building and the plot.
I'm happy I discovered a new to me interesting author, I will surely look for other books written by this writer.
Highly recommended!
Many thanks to the publisher and Edelweiss for this ARC, all opinions are mine

Unfortunately this book was for me, I found it quite dull and the world building seemed to be lacking, the characters were the only redeeming feature, but unfortunately not enough for me to enjoy this.


Thanks to netgalley and the publisher for a free copy for an honest opinion

This book is set in Tel Aviv – Landsman is an Israeli author – and the different setting is just one of a range of aspects that sets this book apart. It is set in an alternate dystopian setting where magic-users around the world face a variety of measures designed to limit their freedom. In the US, they are forced to live in ghettos and while apparently Israeli society is more liberal, it doesn’t prevent many attacks on sorcerers, with most police turning a blind eye to such crimes. Reed is one of those fighting for equal rights for the magical community, putting himself at risk as he serves in a coffee bar. I found his edgy character, with his ability to read and diffuse people’s moods, appealing and sympathetic – even when he was being a bit of a prat, which is when you know the author has nailed her protagonist.

There is also a strong cast of supporting characters, notably his flatmate, Daphne, who is a seer. I like the gritty detail that people who can see into the future or become assailed with other people’s strong emotions are prone to depression and mental illness with a high suicide rate among them – it makes sense. I felt that Landsman had thought through carefully what would be the ongoing consequences for someone cursed with such a gift. In the middle of all this turbulence, Reed falls desperately, helplessly in love with another empath. His same-sex relationship with Lee, an American, grows steadily more intense throughout the book and described with passion and tenderness and while this isn’t principally a romance, this relationship plays a pivotal role in the narrative.

I burned through this book in just over two days, staying awake faaar too long to find out what happens next. I like Landsman’s layered characterisation and trick of writing a situation from the inside out – and would happily read anything else she has written. This is one of my favourite reads of the year so far and is highly recommended for anyone who likes reading about magical worlds with a difference. The ebook arc copy of The Heart of the Circle was provided by the publisher through NetGalley in return for an honest opinion of the book.
10/10

The Heart of the Circle is a new adult SF/magical realism novel set in modern Tel-Aviv by Keren Landsman. Originally published in 2018, this English translation was published 13 Aug 2019 by Angry Robot. It's 400 pages and available in paperback, audio, and ebook formats.

The central themes of isolation, acceptance, love, diversity, racism, and betrayal are all present and accounted for. The world building was more or less nonexistent, it's Tel Aviv, and it's quite believable. The magic system is very well done and also believable. Empaths, seers, and other mages/psychics are shunned and discriminated against openly. People fear them, they're literally made to stand in the back of the bus. Against this background, protagonist Reed (an empath) and his friends become politically active to push back against the prejudice and violence.

There's a great deal of angst, a lot of rough language, violence, and a fair bit of sex. It's a compelling read, though I can't put my finger on why it was so compelling for me. I was very interested in the psychosocial changes which accompanied the magic world-building. The fact that the psychic connections are strengthened by physical touch puts a whole new spin on handshakes and hugs, and the author explores that subtly but well. There was also a subplot involving Reed's ex who had moved on to another relationship with a woman. The exploration of the subtle but present bias against bi-sexual people, even (especially?) from people who identify as gay was refreshing to see.

The translation work is good, but not seamless. There are several places in the book where I noticed the prose was off, slightly mechanical or plodding. All in all though it was a very well written book and a good read. The mystery subplot wasn't the main attraction for me about this book, and I wouldn't really recommend it for mystery fans looking for something a little speculative/SF. This is a solid choice for NA/possibly mature YA (language, sex, violent content would make this iffy for YA). It could be a good choice for speculative fiction buddy read or book club selection.

Four stars. Looking forward to seeing more from this author. I've read and reviewed several books recently besides this one which were written by physicians, and they were all good. Maybe we need more ridiculously well trained academically inclined authors writing SF!

There is little as disappointing and annoying as loving the characters in a book you otherwise deeply dislike. Unfortunately, The Heart of the Circle was one of those books.

The whole plot centres around an allegory for oppression in a vaguely fantastical modern day. In this case, sorcerers (of which there are various kinds) are the ones oppressed. Why? It’s never really explained, we just have to go with it. Reed is a sorcerer who can feel and manipulate people’s emotions (a moodie), though again, how his powers actually work and the limits they have are never explained. Similarly, every other power (elementals, psychics, you name it). Sure, if they use their powers overly much, they end up depleted (and then seem to take their magic from normal people? Not clear), but they seem to be able to do pretty much anything up until that point.

But anyway, the story goes as so: The Sons of Simeon are terrorising the sorcerer community, targeting individuals and businesses who support the sorcerers and killing the sorcerers themselves. And the government is content to just sit back and watch. But, honestly, this is where the plot became a little fuzzy for me. The Sons of Simeon end up targetting Reed, though it isn’t entirely clear why. They want him in a particular place because then they could try kill someone but he would die getting in the way or something, and ultimately they just want sorcerers to rule the world. And I’m still so confused what killing Reed had to do with any of it. It was a plotline that needed more brainpower put into it than I was willing to give. (And don’t even get me started on how confused I was about what Reed actually did to stop all this.)

As a whole, the book seems a little loose. As I said, the limits of the magic system are never really delineated, so when the plot relies on that system, it becomes confusing. Also confusing is the number of plot points that are floating around, and left kind of unresolved. Some of them tie into the denouement, some don’t, and in all, that makes it seem not a very clean plot. Similarly, some character traits are suddenly introduced with no foreshadowing, and relationships make leaps forward within a couple of pages.

And despite all the action, particularly what comes at the end, the book still manages to feel as though it’s just plodding along. There was never any urgency to the writing and the plot. This was probably not helped by the characters going from moving hectically to a long periods of inaction, partly because this book seems to be trying to be a romance as well as a fantasy novel all at once.

But, all plot discussions besides, I was turned off this book very early on by the setting, and the biphobia and cissexism. Let’s take the setting first. I didn’t realise it was set in Israel before I started reading this (more fool me for not reading the blurb at all). I don’t know about you, but a fantasy allegory for oppression, set in Israel? It just feels uncomfortable and turning a deliberate blind eye to actual real life events there. With the biphobia and cissexism, this turned up within the first few chapters. Reed meets an ex-boyfriend and makes comments along the lines of “he’d never expressed interest in the opposite sex” and “people change […] maybe there’s hope for us yet finding out we were always attracted to women”. And later, the ex “will be jealous, but it’ll be too late because he switched teams”. And if that biphobia wasn’t bad enough, how it would be a shock, seeing his girlfriend naked and realising “she was missing something”.

So, in the end, it was a shame I liked the characters, almost, because the rest of this book was a big ol’ disappointment.

I received this book for free from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

I closed this book just a few seconds ago as I type this, and my head is pounding about as hard as my heart is.

Heart of the Circle is a book I’ve been looking forward to for a long time – for at least a year. It was originally published in Israel, and was then translated into English for publication in the West, via Angry Robot, a publisher I have a love/hate relationship with – they find and publish extraordinary books, but their copy-editing often leaves something to be desired.

Well, I hope the final version of this book is a bit more polished than the ARC I received – which had multiple typos and formatting errors – but the book itself? Definitely extraordinary.

HotC is set in a world superficially very similar to our own; it’s a 21st century with mobile phones and cars and barristas and bad tv shows. But this world has sorcerers – people who can manipulate one of the classical elements, see the future, or sense and manipulate the emotions of others. What made my worldbuilding!addict self very happy was the multiple references to sorcerers having existed throughout this world’s history; we hear a bit about sorcerers in the Medieval period, and the effects of colonialist sorcery in Africa, and these things and more have contributed to the myths and stigmas modern sorcerers have to deal with. The attitude towards sorcerers is also not universal; Lee, the love interest of the story, has spent most of his life in the Confederacy – what we know as the USA – where the sorcerer community and culture is very different from what it is in Israel, where our story takes place. Landsman didn’t just slap some magic onto a carbon-copy of our world and call it a day; a lot of thought has gone into creating the world of HotC, and I appreciated all of it. More on that in a bit!

Plot-wise, the blurb is pretty accurate, but drastically undersells the impact and complexity of what’s going on here. In HotC’s Israel, sorcerers are segregated on buses and in schools (I don’t think sorcerers go to schools just for them, but there’s a mention of sorcerer students having to sit in the ‘white space’ during exams, same as the white squares they stand in on the buses), undergo micro-aggressions on a regular basis and full-on hate crimes far too often, and (judging from the slogans chanted during some of the demonstrations) can’t even vote. Reed, our main character, is an empath – what’s known as a ‘moodie’ – working in a cafe, attending rallies when he can and working as a youth counsellor for young sorcerers when he’s off the clock. All of his close friends are sorcerers of one kind or another, and all of them are involved in the political movement for sorcerer rights – something that’s becoming more and more dangerous as the hate group Sons of Simeon becomes progressively more violent. People are dying at the rallies and demonstrations, and the police seem indifferent. It’s a pretty terrible time to be a sorcerer.

And then Reed starts falling for Lee, his ex’s ex, kickstarting a chain of events that leads the Sons of Simeon to paint a bull’s-eye on his back.

Social justice is obviously one of the strongest themes of the book, but not only are there no info-dumping monologues where the writer lectures the reader (Landsman is far too good a writer to need info-dumps of any kind), we’re also presented with a surprisingly wide spectrum of opinions and political stances among the cast. In reality, social justice of any kind is messy and complicated, and even people on the same side often don’t agree on the goals of the movement, never mind the means of reaching those goals. The characters of HotC are realistically diverse in their approaches, opinions, and definitions of success, from the we-must-accept-even-those-who-hurt-us Aurora, to Lee, who calls himself a pacifist, but comes from a community where it’s understood and accepted that anyone who comes after a sorcerer is going home in a body-bag. And absolutely all of them are sometimes too tired or angry or depressed to be social justice warriors all the time – they need time off, to have fun or let off steam or just hide under the blankets for a few hours. It made them all feel incredibly real and human: these aren’t Platonic ideals or paragons of virtue – they’re completely normal people, with terrible taste in music, coffee addictions, and rules about when your roommates can bring their boyfriends over.

I’m not usually a fan of first-person narration, but I think it was the right way to go here, especially with Reed’s sorcery – I’m not sure it could have been conveyed as well in third-person. Empaths regularly deal with intense mood-swings as they pick up on the emotions of those around them, and as the tension mounts towards the second half of the book, being inside Reed’s head really helps you feel the terrifying enormity of the situation he’s in. I spent weeks getting through the first third of the book, picking it up and putting it down again – then read the rest in a little under two days. I couldn’t put it down once things picked up; Landsman’s slightly choppy, bare-bones writing (the complete opposite of the kind of purple prose that generally makes me swoon) was perfect for the boulder-crashing-down-a-hill pacing, the sense of things moving faster and faster, and the walls of a trap closing in.

And I can’t talk a whole lot about what was moving fast, or what the trap is, because that’s really something you need to discover for yourself as you read. But I’m practically bouncing with delight at how cool Landsman’s world is, and I just have to talk about it some more. Especially since so much of it is intimately tied to the plot.

For example: I have never seen empathy-as-superpower like this before. I’m actually in the middle of reading The Infinite Noise by Lauren Shippen, in which empathy might be a supersensory power, but it’s not exactly a useful one, and it was extra-interesting to be reading these two books side by side – because in HotC, empaths are unquestionably terrifying and very, very badass. Being able to fling fire around might be more cinematic, but when it comes to sorcerer battles, empaths are the ones who make or break a victory, particularly when they’re paired with seers – known as ‘damuses’ in the modern vernacular – who can not only see all the possible timelines, but decide which one they’re in. At one point, Reed describes a training battle from his time in the IDF (in HotC, as in our world, it’s mandatory for everyone to serve a set period in Israel’s military), in which he and his best friend, Daphne, a seer, took on 50 elementalists – and the elementalists still complained that they were outnumbered. Daphne’s job is to pick the timelines in which bullets (or fireballs) don’t hit her or Reed – leaving Reed free to take out the enemy. Seers safeguard, empaths wipe the floor with their opponents, basically. At least once they’ve had a little training.

Empaths are also able to transfer emotions between people, something I don’t think I’ve seen before, and which intrigues me – if emotions are the result of various chemicals and hormones, how can you transfer depression into a brain that’s not depressed? Being able to trigger someone’s brain into creating depression, sure, I can see that, but…well, it’s magic, even if no one quite calls it that. I’m interested, but I don’t need a scientific breakdown of how it works.

This is all really impressive, but about a third of the way through the book there is An Incident in a night-club where we see just what kind of precision a trained empath is capable of, and it is simultaneously jaw-droppingly incredible and, when you stop to think about it, properly terrifying.

Empaths have a particular role in the sorcerer-justice movement – they walk on the edges of the marches ‘listening’ for anyone who means them harm – and they have a unique place in the creation of media, being able to imbue art (including the written word) with emotions that viewers or readers can then feel for themselves. Reed works as a ‘moodifier’ for a bit during the book, and I really would have loved to see more and know more about it – is this how all art all over the world, and throughout history, works??? Are artists not expected to elicit emotions with their art, but just…have those emotions imbued in it after the fact??? If the imbued emotions wear off eventually, how does that work when you’re moodifying a manuscript – will all the printed copies of the book have the emotions in them? I HAVE SO MANY EXCITED QUESTIONS!

Ahem.

But although Reed’s empathy plays an enormous role – it’s an intrinsic part of who he is, something that’s made extra clear when another character points out how he (and other empaths) are useless at reading body language because they’ve never had to learn it – especially in his relationship with fellow empath Lee (and by the way, the way they use their empathy to melt into each other psychically is both beautifully written and far more intimate than sex), the Big Dramatic Plot is much more…dictated? If dictated is the right word? – by the seers, and how their powers work. The silent, invisible battle between rival damuses – all of whom are trying to manifest conflicting timelines where their side comes out on top – is both intricate and chilling. Questions of inevitability, fate and destiny come up hard against free will and personal choice – none of which have easy answers, all of which have costs attached to them. One of the scariest conflicts revolves around Reed making the future he’s been fighting for by being himself – Daphne and the other seers can only help so much, before their interference alters the decisions he’ll make, and therefore the timeline that will be created. It reminded me of Rachel Aaron’s Heartstriker series, where the main character Julius is also a linchpin of a prophet’s plans…but can’t be told anything about those plans without unmaking them. Although I love the Heartstriker series dearly, it did feel a lot less like a tease here, and much more like an inevitable, intrinsic aspect of being surrounded by seers.

Ultimately I think that’s what makes Heart of the Circle really special – how real it all felt. From the slang and subtle hand-signals sorcerers use amongst themselves, to how believable the character relationships and dynamics were, to all the ways great and subtle Landsman’s world differs from ours, this felt like a book I could step through like a doorway and find a real place waiting on the other side. Even the cinematic, X-Men-worthy showdown at the book’s climax didn’t feel unbelievable – on the contrary, I felt like I should be ducking the fireballs and getting under cover! So it is with great delight that I can say that Heart of the Circle lived up to my hopes for it, and I very much hope everyone snags a copy come publication day.

The Heart of the Circle introduces a richly developed world filled with deeply personal magic that emanates throughout the pages. It goes beyond a brilliantly written fantasy novel to include a powerful love story, an inside look at human emotion, and a conversation on fighting back against mindless oppressors.

To start, Landsman focuses on a type of magic that goes beyond parlor tricks to get at the heart of each sorcerer. Our protagonist, Reed, is constantly flooded with emotions from those around him. We get to see the power of human emotion at a physical level through his eyes. Situations in the book go beyond storytelling, manifesting in a very raw way. It’s exhilarating, heartbreaking, and emotional to experience as a reader. We also experience the tragedy of knowing you’re going to die and choosing to live anyway. It’s an often visited story in fantasy novels that’s used expertly in the narrative. By the end of the book, I felt drained by my investment in these characters lives, in the best way possible.

The central love story is a beautiful creation. We see two men with the ability to feel things deeper than can be imagined, each suffering from a past that has made it difficult to love another person. They slowly grow closer to each other until their relationship finally blooms into something magnificent. The emotional connection they’re able to share thanks to their abilities makes their love that much more powerful. It’s a very emotional experience to see these two people choose each other when they know things don’t look bright in the future. 

Above all, we see the passion of a group of people at the center of deep prejudices who refuse to back down from demanding the freedom they deserve. Horrible things happen throughout, deaths are prophesied, and still they band together to march in the face of hate. It’s a fight song for our current time, showing how powerful people can be when they band together to refuse oppression. 

Overall, The Heart of the Circle is a wonderful book that stuck with me long after reading. It’s beautifully done in every way and I thank the author for writing such a compelling and heartfelt story.