The Magicians (2009) Book Review

The Magicians by Lev Grossman is a great book to read when you're sitting out on your patio in the summertime, or when you're curled up in a blanket with some hot chocolate on the couch in the winter. In fact, it's pretty great to read it any time of the year. Many refer to The Magicians as Harry Potter goes to college by way of The Chronicles of Narnia. I don't think it's entirely true though. In fact, I'd say Lev Grossman took far more inspiration from The Chronicles of Narnia as well as The Once and Future King by T.H. White (the book the 1963 animated Disney movie, The Sword in the Stone is based on) than he did Harry Potter. Mostly because unlike Harry, Ron, and Hermione, Quentin and his friends don't really do anything at Brakebills before or after the Beast shows up and kills Amanda Orloff. They live there and learn magic there, but we don't spend very much time with them there.

The story doesn't really seem to start until everyone graduates from Brakebills and then discover that Fillory is real and not just a location in a book. It's almost as if the reader is just going through the motions of life with Quentin until the Quest starts more than halfway through the book. And it actually works in this case. A lot of the time with Fantasy fiction, particularly Sword and Sorcery is that you don't get to spend very much time with the characters, getting to know them, before they start on whatever Quest or Adventure the book is about. Here though, Grossman makes sure that we spend as much time with his characters, particularly Quentin and Alice, before they go to Fillory and embark on their journey to kill the Beast, a.k.a. Martin Chatwin, who ended up staying in Fillory even though he and his siblings were always returned to Earth by the realm's guardians, Ember and Umber, due to the psychological effects of being in a magical realm permanently that it has on people, depending on why they want to stay there.

While Quentin is the main character, and Alice is his companion/girlfriend for much of the book, neither of them are my favourite characters. My favourite characters are actually Eliot Waugh and Josh Hoberman. Both of whom have much larger roles in the TV adaptation of the series than they do in the books, particularly this one. There's just something about them that make them more endearing than Quentin and Alice are. Probably because Quentin is so dour that he isn't as much fun to be with. Janet and Julia are also pretty cool too, though Julia becomes more interesting in the second book in the trilogy, The Magician King.

I don't really have any serious problems with the book. I mean it does take them forever to get to Fillory and the vast majority of the book is just average life at a magical college, not to mention a lot of sex, alcoholism and drugs following graduation from Brakebills. You know, decisions a lot of people make in college and after they've graduated from college. However, I do wish that Grossman hadn't glossed over actual lessons at Brakebills and that there was more dialogue between characters.

One of the things that made Hogwarts come to life in the Harry Potter books is that we got to see every aspect of student life there over the course of six out of the seven books. With Brakebills, we get a few glimpses at what life at Brakebills is like, but most of the characters's lives happen outside of the school. Which is the reverse of Harry Potter, where everything happens at Hogwarts, while their lives outside of the school had nothing happening, outside of Dobby interfering with Harry in The Chamber of Secrets and the Dementers attacking Harry and Dudley in The Order of the Phoenix.

I also wish there was a lot more dialogue between characters as well. We spend a lot of time with Quentin and inside Quentin's head that we don't really know what other characters are thinking unless they actually tell Quentin what their thoughts are. Which doesn't happen a lot. Which is the problem I have with the book. Honestly though it's a minor problem.

Final Thoughts and Rating: Overall The Magicians is an excellent book. There's nothing too disturbing about it, though the Beast eating Amanda is pretty disturbing and the final battle between Alice, Quentin and the Beast is fairly bloody, but it's not overly so as the TV show can be. I honestly think that it's better to read The Magicians if you're reading it with the other two books in the trilogy, The Magician King and The Magician's Land as those books, particularly The Magician King, add to and enhance this book as well as some of the characters, such as Julia. I'm giving this book 9.5/10 stars.