Set during the French Revolution, Gardner's epic and tautly plotted tale engages readers from the start with its combination of romance and history, mystery and magic. Yann Magoza, an orphan, travels with entertainers who use supernatural powers in their act. As the novel opens, Yann and his companions are brought to a marquis's chateau, where Yann has a brief but fateful meeting with the foolish and cruel marquis's brave daughter, Sidonie, and where the marquis's associate, a scheming count, brutally but cleverly murders one of the magicians. The pace retains this thrilling momentum all the way through the heart-stopping climax. The novel paints vivid, convincing pictures of the Revolution: characters glimpse the massed thousands of Parisian women marching to Versailles, pitchforks in hand, demanding bread, and mobs setting upon suspected aristocrats. Suspenseful, complex and haunting