BookBrowse Reviews The Magician of Tiger Castle by Louis Sachar

BookBrowse:

Louis Sachar's first novel for adults is not quite as inspired as his earlier creations, but still deftly balances whimsy and poignancy.

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Once upon a time, there was a kingdom in what is now southern France called Esquaveta. Back in those days, Tiger Castle was called Esquaveta Castle, or simply the Castle. (It did have tigers, though—captive ones, given as a gift and used to guard the moat.) The Magician of Tiger Castle begins in the modern day, as the titular magician Anatole, who has survived the hundreds of years since Esquaveta existed, listens to the inaccurate stories told to tourists about Tiger Castle. The real story, which happened 500 years prior and which Anatole goes on to recount, involves an arranged marriage, a defiant princess, and a daring escape—not to mention a good deal of magic (or alchemy, or science, whatever you want to call it).

Louis Sachar is best known for his young adult classic Holes, as well as his weird and wonderful Wayside School series. The Magician of Tiger Castle is billed as his first book for adult readers, but in all honesty there isn't that much to scare off precocious young readers. (Do precocious young readers still exist? I certainly hope they do.) In fact, the general contours of the plot—frustrated young royalty, star-crossed lovers, et cetera, et cetera—pretty much are a young adult novel. It's bald, beleaguered Anatole, with his immortal mouse and his array of urine cups (a necessity for any self-respecting magician in those days), who lends the novel its wry, mature tone.

Anatole is good company. He's thoughtful and deliberate, he cares deeply for Princess Tullia and her lover, the young scribe Pito, and his narration is often quite funny. (On Queen Corinna, who has a prominent scar on her cheek: "People said that it enhanced rather than detracted from her beauty, but they would have to say that, wouldn't they?") But he's a well-rounded character: flashes of old pompous self-regard creep into his narration from time to time, as when he humblebrags about being compared to Leonardo da Vinci, and there is often a heaviness about him. Here is a person who has suffered 500 years of heartache, none greater than his guilt over the fate that met his beloved Babette, a kindly lacemaker, when they were both young.

Which is not to say that this is a heavy, gloomy book. Yes, Anatole must magic his way out of a devil of a predicament: for the sake of their respective kingdoms, Princess Tullia is to be married to the monstrous Prince Dalrympl of Oxatania, who demands that Pito be beheaded at their wedding banquet. But there's a methodical pleasure to watching his process as he experiments with various ingredients to make potions, including daisy petals, blueberries, and a certain kind of mold called "dog vomit." (Apparently, it's less gross than it sounds.)

What makes it even more interesting is the way Anatole repeatedly emphasizes that scientific progress is not a straight line, and that olden times were not so backwards as we assume. He points out that modern hospitals will still occasionally use leeches, and claims that he almost discovered penicillin four hundred years ahead of schedule. (This, too, is an excellent character detail: is it his pride bristling at being overlooked by history, or is it his regret that he came close to discovering something that might have saved Babette and fell short?)

Of the other characters in the book, only gentle, brilliant, slightly daffy Pito rises above the archetypal. While the story is well-told, it doesn't necessarily surprise you, even as the main characters venture out from the castle into foreign lands (monasteries, brothels, things of that nature). It's the kind of book that might have been written at any time within the past hundred years. But of course, that's not such a bad thing, is it?

This review first ran in the September 10, 2025 issue of BookBrowse Recommends.