The Mirror Thief is as difficult to explain as it is completely original. It's one of the most intricately plotted novels in recent years, and to call it imaginative seems like a massive understatement. The three stories are as different from each other as can be, and the fact that Seay weaves them together so skillfully is almost miraculous ... There's no doubt that Seay swings for the fences with his novel, and the scope of his ambition is endlessly impressive. The Mirror Thief is a startling, beautiful gem of a book that at times approaches a masterpiece.
The Mirror Thief is, it turns out, essentially a book about hermeneutics and disappointment. It’s a book about reading, specifically depth reading, to a point of inexplicable transcendence. What does one find in the depths? Nothing? Everything? A bit of both? The book — in the end long, frustrating and slow — becomes a mirror, perhaps inscribed, as are several mirrors in this text, with the words 'this is the face of god you see.' But what that actually means is anyone’s guess. Its main lesson, that 'the reader, not the poet, is the alchemist,' is a hard one to apply. Ten, nine, eight pages from the end, one still hopes, but this book does not contain any of the answers offered by The Secret History of the World. It doesn’t even supply the answers to most of its own questions. This is not The Da Vinci Code for intellectuals. It’s more like Howl translated into Latin and then back again. Over 600 pages. It’s amazing...How this book got published is a complete mystery to me. Not because it is not good enough, but rather because it is too good.
...[a] masterful and mysterious debut novel ... Seay splendidly evokes Venice and its two reflections: the dress, cuisine and intrigues of the merchant republic perched between West and East; the rhythms and desires of Beat-era beach life; and the blare and glare of the Strip during the run-up to the Iraq war. Mirrors are a leitmotif, naturally, but so are memory and its negation. 'Las Vegas is a machine for forgetting,' a character tells Curtis. So are mirrors, in a way, and Seay’s Las Vegas is a mirror for the world.
While the publishers have understandably cited the epoch-crossing novels of David Mitchell as a comparison point, the characters and narratives in the three time zones of The Mirror Thief are more formally linked than the sections of a Mitchell book such as Cloud Atlas ... Seay is clearly a writer of exceptional and eclectic intelligence. Topics under consideration range from why bingo is a fascist game, through penetrating reflections on the poetry of Ezra Pound and techniques of glass-making, to the visual resemblance between the French philosopher Michel Foucault and the Greek-American actor Telly Savalas ... although sometimes tough to like, The Mirror Thief is always highly admirable.
...at a whopping 600 pages, it manages to be both meaty and erudite, epic and granular — a thoroughly immersive experience ... Seay is especially adept at crafting suspense, expertly pacing both charged, sinister conversations and breakneck action sequences. And his commitment to building each world — its atmosphere, its inhabitants, its poetic minutiae — is nothing short of mesmerizing.
[T]he production of enriched confusion is equally a talent of the most adventurous novelists, and it is one that Mr. Seay confidently deploys in his wondrous debut, a deliciously intricate, centuries-spanning tripartite tale of money and mysticism...The immortal yearning to take occult powers in hand drives each story to a thrilling ending. Mr. Seay has conjured his own kind of sorcery, a sophisticated thriller that keeps the pages turning even as it teases the mind.
...the story is intriguing, jumping from the time of George W’s invasion of Iraq to the various pasts and with realistically fleshed-out characters. The details are convincing for the historical settings and I didn’t notice any obvious temporal flaws. And, the over-arching theme—how mirrors reflect and distort reality, even to the extent of capturing essences or the belief that they have magical powers over the souls of men, particularly our images of ourselves—is interesting. It’s hard to miss the comparisons with David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas and would seem to be an obvious inspiration for this type of book. While I wanted to finish the book, like Cloud Atlas, it irritated me and even when finished, it didn’t feel quite complete. If you have issues with literary novels, this is not the book for you.
This book could have easily sunk under the weight of literary references, unlikely coincidences and portentous metaphor, but by couching the narrative in the structures of genre fiction, Seay is able to maintain the pace of his storytelling. Not everything in this fun house of a novel perfectly aligns, but the best illusions rarely do. Solving them is beside the point.
