RaveLos Angeles Review of Books\"... spellbinding ... Butler’s quest to catch the eccentric Carlsen at the \'height of his greatness,\' leads him to a world that is at once as frightening as it is beautiful, and by far transcends the legacy of any individual chess player ... The anecdotes are intriguing mostly because they create a sense of foreshadowing — leaving you to ask what they could reveal about Magnus Carlsen. Butler takes his time to answer this question, which, truly, is his greatest strategy in The Grandmaster. He teases the reader just enough to stir the imagination and then backs off, like a boxer feigning and jabbing ... The writing in The Grandmaster is most inventive when the language drifts from Butler’s comfort zone, prodding him to reach for descriptors from nature to narrate the action ... The minor flaw of the novel is Butler’s attempt to make Magnus Carlsen a star. While not a knock to the writer nor Carlsen, the young champion simply does not cast a spell like Bobby Fischer, and he certainly does not possess the charisma of Muhammad Ali (besides Billy Crystal, who does?) ... Reading Butler’s work as a chess player is something akin to an alcoholic watching someone fiddle with the citrus rind in their Old Fashioned and hearing the ice clink against the rocks glass. It’s dangerous, and impossible. Chess games will ensue ... What Butler has delivered is something much more intoxicating than a sports novel and immediately transcends the genre. It is sports writing at its finest.\
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