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With all the excitement that buzzed around the internet over the publication of the final installment in Lev Grossman’s Magicians trilogy I decided that it might be worth giving the books a go. I borrowed the first book, The Magicians from the library and eagerly began to read.
The book had an interesting start, high school senior Quentin Coldwater and his two friends, all three extremely smart and planning on being admitted to top universities, are dressed up to attend interviews for said universities. Quentin and James each have an appointment with the same interviewer but when they arrive at the house in Brooklyn they find the man dead. But something doesn’t add up. They call the police and one of the paramedics hands the pair large envelopes as she leaves. James refuses his, too freaked out by the day’s events. Quentin takes his and so begins the first step of his new life.
Besides being smart, Quentin is also gifted in slight of hand magic tricks and obsessed with Fillory, a series of books he has read over and over again since childhood. Fillory is very much a Chronicles of Narnia sort of series of books. But the children are named Chatwin and instead of Aslan there are two rams, Ember and Umber who oversee Fillory. It all felt very silly to me and I kept wishing every time Fillory was brought up that Aslan would come bounding in and liven things up with a few swipes of his big lion paw.
But I get ahead of myself. In the envelope Quentin receives is an invitation to sit for exams at a wizard school, Brakebills. Quentin passes and instead of attending Harvard or Yale, he is now going to college to learn how to be a real magician. There were some interesting bits but as with Fillory, I couldn’t stop thinking Harry Potter does this better. While Hogwarts is a grade school thing, Brakebills is college. Instead of Quidditch there is Welters. Instead of houses there are specialized areas of study which are their own kind of “house.” Quentin is a “Physical kid.” Physical magic being one of the more difficult areas, the group is very small. With the addition of Quentin and the smart and talented and pretty but introverted Alice, the group numbers seven.
And so we follow Quentin and Alice through their four years at Brakebills which would normally be five but they are so smart and talented they get jumped ahead a year. There are minor adventures and some interesting things that happen but it kind of all drags on a bit.
At this point I was debating whether I should even bother finishing the book. I decided to keep going. I thought there must be some kind of payoff since the series is so popular. And the last third of the book did pick up and get pretty good. I can’t say that it redeemed the first two-thirds of the book, but I ended up feeling okay about it instead of wondering why I had bothered. Besides the story in the first part of the book feeling unoriginal, the writing itself is frequently clunky. It manages to get better by the end, or maybe the plot just got better so I wasn’t paying as much attention to the writing itself?
I am far from loving the book and being excited enough about it to tell everyone I know to read it. However, I liked it enough to be willing to give the next book, The Magician King, a go. I won’t be doing this any time soon, I need to get a little distance from The Magicians in order to make a fresh approach at book two. Perhaps over the summer.
This looked so interesting to me when it first came out, but I’ve seen so many mixed reviews since then, I just don’t know if I want to try it yet.
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Jeane, from what others are saying the books get better as you go along; getting past the first book is the hard part!
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I can’t speak to the whole trilogy, because I haven’t read The Magician’s Land yet, but I will say that The Magician King fixed a lot of the problems I had with The Magicians. It was also better-paced, I think — just a more assured and well-put-together book than the first one. For what that’s worth!
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Jenny, very good to know! That helps me kind of look forward to book two instead having a bit of dread about it 🙂
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I too got a little bogged down with The Magicians. My problem was angsty Quentin. I actually loved all the parts about Fillory, how they felt silly even as he longed to go. That’s how I feel about lots of fictional places, and how I’ve felt at Universal Tours of the town square from Back to the Future or the road through Hogsmeade.
Jenny is so right about The Magician King being better, though. I thought it was a lot better than the first one, and then the third one is the best!
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An anthology: The Rivals Of JK Rowling…
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Ian, did you just add another book to my TBR pile? 😉
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Jeanne, angsty Quentin is terrible and his double standard regarding Alice made me angry. Also, Alice was my favorite character and, well, you know what happens which also made me angry! Their obsession with Fillory was understandable and kind of fun but what I annoyed by how Narnia-like it was and I’m not even a big Narnia fan. But I’m glad to know the next book is better. I will give it try!
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I tried reading this series back when there was just one book out. I disliked it so much that though I finished the first book I didn’t bother with the succeeding books. The characters were annoying and the plot was unoriginal.
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misanthropologist, yup, I completely understand, I felt the same way about the characters and plot. But, according to others, the next book is much better. I’ll be sure to let you know whether or not that is true in a few months! 🙂
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I know a few people who read this book and their reaction was very much like yours: tepid. I’m not sure whether “it gets better” is enough for me to read it or not, but I’ll wait for your next installment. There is the inevitable comparison to Harry Potter in the subject matter, and so if an author is going to strap that on, it better be hit right on the sweet spot and sent out of the park. Otherwise….pppfft.
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Grad, normally it gets better wouldn’t be enough of an endorsement for me either but I figure there must be some reason for book three to have everyone chattering so I’m going to go with it and see what happens. Fingers crossed I won’t be disappointed! Yeah, everyone who writes anything about wizard school after Harry Potter is going to have a really hard time.
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I am so pleased to know, finally, what this is all about! I’ve heard the books mentioned lots of times and often in glowing terms. Having read Harry Potter, I think I am probably good with wizarding schools for a while, but I enjoyed reading your review!
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Litlove, glad to have fulfilled you curiosity! The one thing you get at a wizarding university that we didn’t get in Harry Potter is sex and alcohol but unfortunately even that didn’t make it more interesting.
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I’ll remember that!
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I just don’t know if I want to read this. I didn’t like his book Codex, and I fear this one sounds like more of the same. Hmm. I am such a huge fan of Harry Potter, and I am afraid I am really only interested in this one because of comparisons. Might not be reason enough.
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Dana, I’ve not read Codex so I can;t make any comparisons there, but if you weren’t keen on that then you might want to skip this one. You’d have to really want to read it in order to make it through the very slow first half of the book.
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I am not sure about this one!! This sounds suspiciously Harry Potterish and I somehow like concepts in their originality…therefore I also did not get a hang of Percy Jackson series…I think I will pick up Ian’s recommendation instead! 😉
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cirtnecce, there is some original stuff in the book but it suffers greatly from how much it is like a whole lot of other books. It does get much better at the end but it is a long road to get there.
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Hm, not one that would appeal to me, an attempt to hook onto the coat tails of wizardry success a la H Potter?
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BookerTalk, I’m not sure that it’s trying to imitate Harry Potter since the wizard school is less than half the book. HP does make it extra hard however to have any kind of wizarding school without inviting comparison and this one sort of suffered from it.
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It sounds almost mystery-ish but I like the science fiction spin. I’m not sure, given your somewhat tepid response, that it is something for me but like Litlove, now I know what it’s all about. Sometimes it’s a great feeling to be propelled to your next read when you love a book so much and want to move on to the next, but maybe knowing you don’t want to read more is a good thing, too. Now you can choose something else that appeals more!
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Danielle, it is kind of mystery-ish now that you mention it. Sort of a mystery-fantasy quest combination that sometimes works and sometimes doesn’t. Several people who have read the second book assure me it is much better so come summer or there abouts, I’ll put it to the test.
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I started The Magicians in 2010; I actually finished it, but it was an effort. I wasn’t interested in continuing the series, although I was offered the next one.
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Jenclair, yeah, it’s a tough one to get through and I totally understand having no interest in reading the next one! Hopefully I won’t regret it when I do!
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Thank you for this review Stefanie. I have seen this book SO many times, and thought of reading it, and I am a huge fan of the Narnia stories so I always thought it was something similar — now I’m glad I know more about it. I don’t think it would be something I really enjoyed reading, so, probably I will skip it. And quit wondering.
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I kind of lost interest when I read this, too. But the premises were so interesting and literary that I was interested in keeping with it.
I’m a fan of Grossman’s and love the stuff he writes for Times, but I bought this book because I saw a panel between Lev Grossman and John Green, and Green highly recommended The Magicians.
The most unique thing about The Magicians, I think, was the dark tone that settles in towards the end. Grossman’s said that The Magicians is basically what Hogwarts would look like if it were in America – so there’s an answer for those before me who were wondering – but he adapts it to fit American politics and culture, so the two end up being very different.
(I read this book like two years ago so the details are a bit fuzzy)
I did read the second one just last summer, and I feel like it wasn’t a complete waste of time. I did NOT like the ending, or the plot twist towards the end, or whatever. I’m still outraged/horrified from it so I’m not going to be picking up the final book anytime soon.
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Shannon, that’s really interesting about Hogwarts in America. There was definitely a dark tone that settled in even before the end. After they left school and were spending their time drinking and doing drugs and not much of anything else it was not what I expected, which is good because I don’t my books to be predictable! The pacing in the book was terrible and went a long way into sucking away my interest. Glad to hear the second one isn’t a complete waste of time. You have me curious about the ending!
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did the writing come across to you as misogynistic?? it did to me… i haven’t read the following books, i’m not sure i will (though some people promise solemnly it improves). i think it is the writer’s choice to be sadistic on some chracters or not, and when female characters keep getting the short end… it gets to me.
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I didn’t see that when I read the first one, but the second one, YES. But I don’t think it was so much the writing style as the plot choices…. the end of the book was disturbing on so many levels, one of which was misogyny.
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That’s sad to hear especially since I have been reassured the books get better as they go along.
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It’s difficult to assess because I have one specific scene in mind, and it’s not like the other characters weren’t outraged with what happened either.
It did bring this piece to mind about sexual violence toward women in literature: http://maggiestiefvater.com/blog/this-is-a-post-about-literary-rape/
And if it brings an article like THAT to mind, I think it’s crossed a line.
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Oh dear. that bad? Excellent piece, thanks for the link!
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It wasn’t in-your-face, but yeah it was there. There is a scene when they’ve all been turned into foxes that involves some rough fox-sex that I found rather disturbing. Plus the strongest magician is a female and she pretty much sacrifices herself in the end for our narrator with whom she is in love. The other main female character is portrayed as sort of predatory. So yeah, a bit disappointing on that score.
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yes! the Allegiant-syndrome…! (oops, too late for a spoiler alert)
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