The Prestige
Two Victorian stage magicians conduct a feud across decades. The plot turns on a real scientific mystery (Tesla's wireless electricity) and the nature of sacrifice. Priest wrote both the best Victorian fantasy and the best novel about the cost of obsession.
The Victorian diary voices break the illusion the structure depends on, “diaries are unconvincing as Victorian documents.” Both magicians are fundamentally unlikeable, so long stretches with either narrator become a slog rather than a pleasure. One of the two middle diary sections is the named patch, “Angier’s part of the story is a bit drag.” Those arriving from the film find the pacing much slower and the plot more diffuse, and a contingent prefers Nolan outright: “the book was fun, but the movie was art.” The narrator-switching disorients before the frame’s shape arrives.
The case for it and the rest of the canon open with Pro.
