The Magician of Tiger CastleReview posted March 2, 2026.
Books on Tape, 2025. 7 hours, 17 minutes.
Review written February 12, 2026, from a library eaudiobook.
Starred Review
Louis Sachar has written a book for adults!
Louis Sachar is the Newbery-winning author of Holes and the Wayside School books, both of which I read before I started writing Sonderbooks. (I do have a review up of his 2010 book, The Cardturner.) From those books, I already knew he's especially good at intricate, clever plots - and yes, that's a way this book shines as well.
By the time my hold came in on this audiobook, I'd forgotten it was for adults, and just saw it was a Louis Sachar book. So I was a bit surprised when the main character was a man in his forties. After said main character was surprisingly frank about some bodily functions (nothing crude, just surprising if you thought it was a children's book) - I remembered it was his first novel for adults.
The book begins with Anatole sipping tea at a cafe in front of a castle that keeps a tiger in the moat. As he talks about what the tour guide is saying to a group, we begin to realize he knows a lot more about the castle than he should. And then he launches into the story of how the first tiger came to the castle in the 16th Century as a betrothal gift to the princess of Esquaveta (which was the small country the castle ruled then) in preparation for the wedding of the century.
Anatole was then the royal magician. He didn't cast spells, but he was exceptionally skilled at mixing potions. As the wedding approached, Princess Tullia declared that she was not going to marry the prince of a neighboring country because she'd fallen in love with her tutor. The tutor was now in the dungeon, and the king tasked Anatole with making the princess go through with the marriage and saving Esquavita from the neighboring kingdom's powerful army.
And that's the story that follows. At first, Anatole simply plans to fulfill the king's command. He'll make a potion to make the two lovebirds forget all about each other. But he needs to get close to the prisoner in order to get a heartfelt tear for the potion - and that involves getting to know him. And things get much more complicated than they seem at first.
So this is a fantasy story - Anatole is very good at making potions, and we appreciate all the work and experimentation he puts into making it just right. This is no romantasy - but we do come to care about the princess and the prisoner, and there is definitely a romantic subplot - even if their love must first be thwarted. As I mentioned, this author is particularly good at plotting, and he had me intent on the story every step of the way.
Yes, adults who read and loved Holes as kids are going to love this, too. It's a completely different story, but it does appeal to the same part of my brain that loves a tightly constructed plot with characters you can't help but care about.