The Magicians by Lev Grossman

July 9, 2014     erinbook     Book review

The Magicians (The Magicians #1) by Lev Grossman


Release Date: August 11, 2009
Publisher: Viking
402 Pages
Received: Borrowed from Professor
Format: Hardcover


Rating: 

*This review contains mild spoilers*
Description: Quentin Coldwater is brilliant but miserable. He’s a senior in high school, and a certifiable genius, but he’s still secretly obsessed with a series of fantasy novels he read as a kid, about the adventures of five children in a magical land called Fillory. Compared to that, anything in his real life just seems gray and colorless.
Everything changes when Quentin finds himself unexpectedly admitted to a very secret, very exclusive college of magic in upstate New York, where he receives a thorough and rigorous education in the practice of modern sorcery. He also discovers all the other things people learn in college: friendship, love, sex, booze, and boredom. But something is still missing. Magic doesn’t bring Quentin the happiness and adventure he thought it would.
Then, after graduation, he and his friends make a stunning discovery: Fillory is real.
Review: Oh my god, this book!

 

Yeah, that. Ok, the story about how I heard about this book is sort of weird. Some people may know that I’m a Nerdfighter and follow the Vlogbrothers videos made by John Green and his brother Hank. So there’s this video where John created a list of recommended books based on what what popular at the time. For people who liked Harry Potter he recommended The Magicians. At the time I was mildly interested but I forgot about it pretty quickly. Fast forward about a year to my Popular Culture and Communications class in college where we are discussing books and the impressions readers can have from just the front and back covers. My group got this book for discussion and afterwards I asked if I could borrow it. I was so happy that I did.
Like John Green said, fans of Harry Potter will like this book, but not young fans. This book is certainly not for kids, this is Harry Potter for adults, kinda. Think Harry Potter in college, with everything that goes with it: drinking, sex, smoking, etc… Harry Potter with a cynical edge and cursing that is much stronger and more satisfying than “Merlin’s Pants!” But calling it Harry Potter for adults is really just the quick and easy way to describe this book rather than the actual truth. It is a very different monster.
 The main character is far from perfect, he’s largely unhappy with most things, but he’s a realistic human being. He has real problems, real relationships, and real struggles that would plague him, magic school or not. Yes, the magic school is a large part of this first book in a trilogy, but there are two more books after this one and the magic school only features in the first part of the first one. This book also boasts a little dash of Tolkien and a healthy bit of C.S. Lewis’ Chronicles of Narnia. We’ll get to that later.
The first half to two thirds of this book is devoted to the “great boarding school of magic that non-magic folks have somehow never heard of” part of the story. I joke, but I really love this part of the book. Once our main character arrives he must take a test to determine if he’s right for this school. Obviously, since this book is called The Magicians, he gets in.
I was a bit surprised that his entire magical education takes place in the confines of about two thirds or so of the book. Perhaps I was spoiled by six books of wizard school with Harry Potter but I kind of expected it to go much slower than it did. This is where I start having a bit of trouble with this book. Once Quentin graduates it takes a while for anything truly interesting to happen.
Finally the book gets back on track with the fun bits and we get Fillory. Fillory, a land thats story is kinda…awkwardly similar to C.S. Lewis’ Narnia. Yes, this complaint from a lot of readers is true, Fillory is a bit close to Narnia for comfort. However, I do not think that this makes the entire story unoriginal at all.
One of the things that I love so much about The Magicians is the magic system. There is no silly wand waving or latinate nonsense here. This magic is extremely difficult to learn and taxes the user physically and mentally. There are consequences to screwing up a spell or attempting something out of your skill level here. Real consequences for a more real world.
Overall I really enjoyed this book, with a few minor issues to complain about. I wish it was a little more consistent, a little more polishing wouldn’t have gone amiss. Still, I am excited to read the second and third books in this trilogy (the third to be released this summer), though maybe not right away.
Have you read The Magicians? Leave a comment with your own thoughts and feelings below.
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