The Magician's Land (2014) Book Review

The Magician's Land is one of those weird third acts of a trilogy that is pretty unnecessary until the third to last chapter. At least when it comes to Quentin. The rest of the story was pretty cool. Especially the heist that Quentin, and new character, Plum find themselves involved in at the beginning of the book. The Magician's Land is like Return of the Jedi in that the first few chapters of the book, like the opening sequence of the movie, has nothing to do with the rest of the book. At least we, meaning the readers, think it doesn't while we're reading those chapters. As the book goes along though we discover that the first several chapters of the book has everything to do what's going on with Eliot and Janet in Fillory though it takes quite a while for that connection to be made.

As Dan Fogler's character said in Fanboys, the greatest thing Luke Skywalker ever did was destroy the Death Star in the first Star Wars movie. Unlike Luke, Quentin doesn't even find his Death Star, meaning the thing he's supposed to do as the hero, until the third to last chapter of the book and he's been the main protagonist of this trilogy since the first paragraph of the first book. Which is fine because Grossman wanted the series to last for three books, so he had to stretch the story out to cover three books, even though two books would've been just fine. My problem stems from the fact that every single character in this series is more interesting than the one we're supposed to be following.

I know I've been ragging on Quentin in every review I've done of the series, but there's a very good reason for it. Lev Grossman, the author of these books, is a journalist first, and a novelist second. Which means that his writing sensibilities comes from that occupation, rather than from a literary standpoint. While The Magicians wasn't the first novel that Grossman wrote and got published, it's still early enough in his writing career as a novelist that he was still writing as a journalist, who dealt with facts, research and investigation, rather than daydreaming, creating and developing characters into reasonable facsimiles of actual people. As a result, Quentin, who acts like a real person, isn't written as someone who is interesting. Everyone else in the sizeable cast is. For example, Julia was written beautifully in The Magician King while Eliot, Janet and Plum are written beautifully in this book. But for some reason there were enough characters that Grossman couldn't pay attention to all of them in every book, and he also had difficulty making sure his main character, our eyes into this world of magic and fantasy, was interesting enough for the readers to justify wanting to follow him.

As I was reading the book I thought the flashback chapters for the events leading up to Plum and Quentin's expulsion from Brakebills were unnecessary and took away from what was going on in Fillory and was taking away from what was going on with Quentin and Plum in the present day. But I finished the book on Monday night and since then I've been thinking about it further. The flashbacks weren't unnecessary as it informed us who Plum is as a character and how her time at Brakebills shaped her into the person she becomes by the end of the book.

I love Plum. She's everything that Quentin should've been by the end of the first book. She's motivated, determined and we know why she is the way she is. I won't spoil it for you in case you haven't read the book yet, but Plum has a connection to certain characters in the book that I actually didn't really see coming just because it's the third/final book in the trilogy and it's the kind of connection that Grossman should've given to Quentin when he created the character in the mid to late 2000s. That's all I'll say about that.

While Eliot and Janet have a lot more to do in this book than they have in either of the first two books, sadly my three favourite characters, Julia, Josh and Poppy are sidelined for much of the book. Josh and Poppy provide some witty comments and not so helpful suggestions, but otherwise they don't do anything. Like I know Poppy is pregnant, though she doesn't actually have her baby by the end of the book, but I wish Grossman had given her a lot more to do than sit on her throne all day. In a way The Magician's Land is like Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith in that way as George Lucas sidelined Padme Amidala in that movie because she was pregnant with Luke and Leia. And just like in The Magicians Julia doesn't appear for much of the book and only shows up right before Quentin saves Fillory in the way he saves it, which I also won't spoil for you in case you haven't read the book before. I'm more okay with that though because I feel like Julia's story finished at the end of The Magician King. However I still feel like Josh and Poppy had more to do.

Final Thoughts and Overall Rating: Overall The Magician's Land is a really well written book. While I have a lot of problems with it, I absolutely enjoyed reading it. The same thing goes for The Magicians Trilogy as a whole. While I have a lot of problems with it, the trilogy is an awesome series and I would highly recommend it. Having read the entire trilogy now I would have to say that The Magician King is my favourite book in the trilogy. While The Magicians and The Magician's Land work better with The Magician King to connect them and function as a three act piece of storytelling. I'm giving The Magician's Land 7/10 stars simply because the ending was good, I liked how a certain character, who returns in this book, calls Quentin out on his crap. I'm giving the trilogy as a whole 9/10 stars because it's an incredible piece of fiction when put together into a single piece with each book complementing the other two in the trilogy.