The Magician King (2011) Book Review

In my review of The Magicians (2009) I said that it's better to read that book if you're reading the entire trilogy as this book and it's sequel The Magician's Land (2014) adds to and enhances The Magicians. However, I said that before I'd even finished The Magician King. And now that I have finished it, I actually have proof that The Magician King adds to and enhances The Magicians particularly when it comes to the character of Julia. Grossman does it in a way that not only enhances the previous book, but strengthens the overall story in this one. Which is something that not a lot of writers can do well. So it's not just useless background information that has no connection to the rest of the book.

While I liked the character of Julia in the previous book, she wasn't prominent in it because she didn't go to Brakebills with Quentin and because that book spent so much time focusing on Quentin, Julia just ended up disappearing, aside from a brief scene, until the very end of the book where she's this powerful goddess. In The Magician King though, Julia really does become the dual protagonist along with Quentin. And her journey to becoming a magician is honestly much more exciting and more true to how a person's journey towards anything actually is in the real world. Yes, Quentin has lost people, and has sacrificed a lot, but his sacrifices are more fantastical and fictional throughout the first book. With Julia though her struggle is more relatable in a way as sometimes we have to leave people behind in order to become the best versions of ourselves. Particularly when those people are toxic in our lives. It's not until the end of the book when her and her group of Hedge Witches start performing their ceremony to summon Our Lady Underground that her sacrifices become more fantastical in nature.

That entire scene where Julia and the Murs group attempt to summon Our Lady Underground, but get Reynard the Fox, a Trickster God, instead is probably one of the most horrifying scenes in the book. And while it's more descriptive being words on the pages of a book, that moment Julia realizes what's going on is a vital turning point in the series overall. Especially because she realizes it too late and most of her friends are killed while she is assaulted by Reynard. But before that, it was more like struggles of every day life even though she was in search of magic, something that doesn't actually exist in the real world. Grossman did such a great job writing those scenes.

Of course, Janet is the one who disappears in this book. Eliot does too for a while when Quentin and Julia are on Earth, looking for a way back to Fillory since the Neitherlands are messed up at this point. But in a way that's okay because they aren't main characters in the books the way Eliot and Margo are in the TV series. They're supporting characters to Quentin and Julia and that's it.

Speaking of Quentin, this book still doesn't make him all that interesting of a character. Not just in comparison to Julia, who has become my favourite character in the books, but to any other character that I've read about in other books. There's just something super ordinary about him and it kind of clashes with the fantastical elements in the series. Don't get me wrong, Quentin is a very good character, it's just he's not as interesting as some of the other characters in the books. It's almost like Grossman stagnated Quentin in the last book so that something awesome will happen with him in the next one. Hopefully that's true.

The Magician King is very much the second act of a three act story. It's dark, it's gripping and the ending is sort of depressing. Like The Empire Strikes Back (1980) The Magician King ends with everything having gone to hell. They saved magic, which the Old Gods were going to take away thanks to Julia and the Murs people having summoned Reynard previously as apparently nobody had summoned the Old Gods in over 2000 years, but Quentin was banished from Fillory as he'd assumed the burden of what Julia had done, due to the fact that she did it because Quentin didn't succeed in getting her into Brakebills in the last book. So because of that, the sacrifice Quentin had to make was giving up being a King of Fillory and going back to Earth.

Final Thoughts and Rating: Overall The Magician King is an excellent sequel to The Magicians. It doesn't feel forced or unnecessary, which many sequels can feel like. A lot of the problems that I had with the first book were fixed with this one. There's still not a ton of dialogue, but there's a lot more in this book than there was in the last one. I do still have an issue with Quentin being the main character just because he's not quite as interesting as the other characters. But, like I said, maybe the third book will justify him being the main character of the series. I'm going to give The Magician King 9.7/10 stars since the problems I had with The Magicians were mostly fixed here, but Quentin is still posing a problem as the protagonist of the series.