MixedJanuary MagazineGold stacks the first chapter of Carter Beats the Devil with such a profusion of quirky characters, coy historical references and red herrings that the story comes near to exploding in his face from an excess of cleverness … Gold redeems himself in the subsequent chapters of this often elegantly written book. He spins a fascinating story, beginning with Carter's childhood encounter with the demanding and frightening world of magic … Gold does himself no favors by playing fast and loose with much of the history in Carter Beats the Devil. While the convention in other fiction of this sort has been to set a fictional narrative against a historically accurate backdrop, Gold mixes well-researched tidbits about magicians of the period with jarringly anachronistic elements.
