Product Description
The New York Times bestselling novel about a young man practicing magic in the real world
Like everyone else, precocious high school senior Quentin Coldwater assumes that magic isn’t real, until he finds himself admitted to a very secretive and exclusive college of magic in upstate New York. There he indulges in joys of college-friendship, love, sex, and booze- and receives a rigorous education in modern sorcery. But magic doesn’t bring the happiness and adventure Quentin thought it would. After graduation, he and his friends stumble upon a secret that sets them on a remarkable journey that may just fulfill Quentin’s yearning. But their journey turns out to be darker and more dangerous than they’d imagined. Psychologically piercing and dazzlingly inventive, The Magicians is an enthralling coming-of-age tale about magic practiced in the real world-where good and evil aren’t black and white, and power comes at a terrible price.
Amazon.com Review
Amazon Best of the Month, August 2009: Mixing the magic of beloved children’s fantasy classics (from Narnia and Oz to Harry Potter and Earthsea) with the sex, excess, angst, and anticlimax of life in college and beyond, Lev Grossman’s Magicians reimagines modern-day fantasy for grownups. Quentin Coldwater lives in a state of perpetual melancholy, privately obsessed with his childhood books about the enchanted land of Fillory. When he’s admitted to the surreptitious Brakebills Academy for an education in magic, Quentin finds mastering spells is tedious (and love is even more fraught). He also discovers his power has thrilling potential–though it’s unclear what he should do with it once he’s moved with his new magician cohorts to New York City. Then they discover the magical land of Fillory is real and launch an expedition to use their powers to set things right in the kingdom–which, naturally, turns out to be a much murkier proposition than expected. The Magicians breathes life into a cast of characters you want to know–if the people you want to know are charismatic, brilliant, complex, flawed magicians–and does what Quentin claims books never really manage to do: “get you out, really out, of where you were and into somewhere better. ” Or if not better, at least a heck of a lot more interesting. –Mari Malcolm
Theoden Humphrey @ 8:47 am
Stop thinking this is a fantasy book. I know, I know, it’s called “The Magicians,” the plot synopsis references all three of the most famous fantasy series and describes a handful of familiar fantasy tropes, including the school of magic and the fairy tale land come to actual life. But forget all of that. I have read more fantasy books than I can remember — I’m named for a character in perhaps the most famous fantasy series of all time — and I’m telling you: “The Magicians” is not a fantasy.
It has fantastic elements, yes. There is magic; there is a school for magic, where the characters learn to cast spells, using hand gestures and arcane language and strange mystical components — Ziploc bag full of mutton fat, anyone? — and there is a voyage from this world to another, a land of naiads and fauns and magical speaking animals, gods and demons, kings and queens, quests and wishes. But this book is something very different from the usual fantasy novel. In “The Magicians,” Lev Grossman has done something unusual, and remarkable, perhaps even unique: this is a grown-up fantasy. This book is to fantasy what “The Grapes of Wrath” is to travel books, what “The Metamorphosis” is to self-help: so much more depressing and visceral and funny and horrifying, and genuine, and fascinating, and hard to read and therefore valuable, that it doesn’t belong in the same category despite sharing some central traits. The setting is imagined, and there are supernatural things that happen, but make no mistake: this is a serious novel.
Where the characters in most fantasy books are heroic, larger than life, the sort of people we wish we could be, these magicians are not: the characters are too close to plain old humanity, flawed, contradictory, foolish and foolhardy, to stand in as idealized versions of ourselves. Where most fantasy books provide an escape from our reality, this book does not. In point of fact, the moral of this book is that escape is not only impossible, but dangerous and harmful to attempt. The hero, Quentin Coldwater, attempts to escape every serious situation he faces, and every time, he ends up worse off than he would have been if he had just been able to deal with it, honestly and sincerely. But his response to his worsened circumstances is to try to escape again — with predictable results. Every step Quentin takes is the wrong one, and every step sinks him deeper and deeper into a quagmire. The book gets hard to read: not because the writing is anything less than excellent, as it is top notch from first page to last, but because the urge to reach into the page and slap, shake, and eventually throttle the main character becomes overwhelming. But that desire, that feeling, should be familiar to every adult who has thought back on his or her life, and shook his or her head, thinking, “Why did I do that? How could I be that stupid?” That desire to smack Quentin is no different from the desire to smack our younger selves, and sometimes, that’s a terribly annoying feeling to have, which makes this a somewhat annoying book to read.
The real triumph of this book, however, is that it is not only a serious novel, despite what I have been saying. Grossman is able to describe a world of wonder and imagination, and populate it with characters who are utterly unworthy of the magic all around them, who appreciate nothing, who completely flub their great chance — just like I would have done if I lived through this experience, just as most of us do with our great chances in our real, mundane, unfantastic lives, which are also as full of wonder as any dreamed by a teller of tales. And because the characters are so real, so easy to relate to, it makes the fantasy seem just as real (which, of course, makes the real world just as fantastic). Brakebills reminded me of my own college experience, and yet it is a magical place. Fillory is indeed a fairy tale land come to life in this book, and I found myself wishing that I could believe I would have handled Fillory better than Quentin does — but knowing that I would have done almost precisely the same things, made the same choices and the same mistakes. And the ending is glorious: the climactic action scene is thrilling and impossible to put down; the revealed secrets are both surprising and satisfying; the final resolution is, if not completely happy, at least hopeful.
I won’t say that this is a great book, on par with “Of Mice and Men” and “Catcher in the Rye” and “To Kill a Mockingbird,” but I will say that it is closer to those than it is to “The Hobbit” or the Xanth books. If you are a fan of literature, of thinking about your reading, then you must get this book, especially if you enjoy fantasy. If you are just looking for an escape, look elsewhere — because this is not a fantasy. Or at least, it isn’t only a fantasy. It’s a wonder.
Mitchell M. Tse @ 11:42 am
The Magicians by Lev Grossman is a well written story about a magical world, a fairly detailed world of rules and exceptions. The story, at one point, had a very poignant concept of what magic may be: That if the universe was a house that God made for everyone, that Magic was the tools he left behind, possibly by accident, in the garage. That perhaps using Magic was as dangerous as kids finding these power tools and such, and using them without direction or precaution.
The characters in the story are fairly fleshed out, in that you have a good sense of what drives them, what makes them tick, you can see the dynamics between them. The description of the magic school Brakebills is very well done, filled with things that people don’t understand about and that has a life of its own. And while at the very end there’s something that can lead to a sequel, there’s definitely an ending to this book, no gimmick cliffhanger that requires you to wait for the next book.
Definitely, the book had the makings of a great story. Yet, I was left numb at the end, not happy, not sad, not scared. And that, really, is why I left this review with 3 stars. I read fiction to be entertained. This entertainment can be in the form of humor, feeling good, scared, excited, titillated, insightful, or some combination thereof. Instead, when I read this book, I saw through the eyes of a fairly apathetic protagonist, who messes things up and blames everyone else, who had chances to become a hero and fails each time. I read about a person who wanted something, got it, didn’t like it, and became apathetic. I read about the antagonist being defeated, the protagonist winning in the end, and no one feeling … well, happy for having accomplished anything. Perhaps this is what real life can be. But come on, that’s not entertainment. And that’s what’s sad about this, that this book had the potential to be a GREAT story, but misses the mark significantly.
Would I recommend this book to someone else? Honestly, I’m not sure, and that’s why I must conclude with 3 stars.
I’m interested in discussing this story with anyone else who is willing to, without putting any spoilers into play, so I’ll do that via comments to my own review. Feel free to join in.
Crystal Lily @ 1:28 pm
Ok right off the bat you get the distinct impression you’ve read all of this before.
Boy feels socially akward…boy discovers he’s magical…boy gets into private magical school.
So right away you feel…wow that’s very Harry Potter of you. Yet somehow it’s not bad and the author even at times makes fun of this very obvious fact by referencing Rowlings work. I thought the book would feel stale, and oddly I found just the opposite. The differences are slight but they are there. Here it’s college, the student body is much smaller and the quirkiness of the world is much more subdued.
Now the other obvious work at play here is C.S. Lewis and his Narnia books…except here it’s called Fillory. But the rest is almost exactly the same. Childrens books written long ago where the young Chatwin siblings find themselves falling into a magical realm through a grandfather clock. Talking animals and all. Right down to the need for human Kings and Queens and the set of 4 thrones. ANd while for the majority of the book these tales remain as such…tales which our antagonist holds quite dear…the last quarter of the book finds a more real version which, while still resembling the childrens tales, ends up being far more sinister in actuality.
And for good measure I seemed to feel a dash of Neverending Story thrown in. The books he’s been reading aren’t fiction!
Now all that being said and all the painfully obvious similarities aside, I found an astonishing thing happen once I stopped thinking about those facts. I found that even though these ideas were recycled the author does manage to bring a fresh take on them. I enjoyed reading this book immensely and I really didn’t expect that. He writes succinctly and manages to encompass a great span of time and events while still leaving the reader feeling as if nothing were left out. And maybe there’s a bit of that “comfort food” mindset at play here. But it didn’t matter while I was reading it. I was genuinely curious where the story was headed and I was engaged with the characters straight on through.
I would recommend this to anyone who enjoys fantasy books and those with a bit of a yearning for old childhood classics minus the childishness.
Martin S. Ferry @ 2:05 pm
Grossman does seem to understand one thing perfectly clearly. The characteristic function of the fantasy novel – the reason they are written and they are read – is to provide some measure of escape from the real world. So given that in his novel, ^The Magicians^, Grossman so completely and deliberately fails to achieve this objective, indeed, given that he takes the very opposite course and pens a novel so thoroughly mired in drudgery and mundanity, it is only fair to him to conclude that his intent is not to write fantasy.
While the novel is replete with fantastical elements, from powerful arcane arts to talking animals, they are not its focus. They are mere window dressing. Behind the window, Grossman paints a tableau of the malaise of the wildly talented, good-looking and privileged. Quentin Coldwater is the protagonist. None of the usual fantasy plot-structures apply, there is no prophecy to be fulfilled and neither is there an epic battle between good and evil. Instead, the engine that drives the plot is Quentin’s persistent dissatisfaction.
I offer the tersest possible summary of the novel: Whatever exquisite and extraordinary circumstance tall, handsome, brilliant Quentin finds himself in proves insufficient to inculcate in him a psychological state even faintly resembling happiness. These circumstances range from his imminent acceptance to Princeton, to his being one of a select group of the most talented students at already ridiculously selective college of magic, to his being deeply in love with a beautiful and talented woman, to his being a phenomenally well paid corporate executive, to his being offered the crown and keys to a Narnia like kingdom. They hit many points in between. Quentin always identifies something dissatisfying about his life. He always blames his circumstances for his unhappiness. Some people die. Quentin grows more misanthropic. Grossman leaves the reader uninformed as to whether Quentin has learned anything from his experiences. Quentin lays one more long bet on something else making him happy. The novel ends.
The three-fold theme of the novel amounts to this: it is perilously, depressingly, maddeningly hard to be enormously privileged and talented; and it may be better, after all, to be unexceptional and dull; and happiness, if anyone really ever gets their hands on it, requires an enormous amount of dedication and at least a little luck to maintain and obtain. Nothing Grossman offers is original, and each part of the theme is better addressed elsewhere in literature. A reader interested in the struggles of the brilliant and the privileged might read Bret Easton Ellis’ ^American Psycho^, or some Jane Austen, or overcome the worthwhile challenge of Thomas Wolfe’s ^Look Homeward, Angel^. Philip Larkin covered the second theme with twenty-four skillful lines in his poem “Born Yesterday”. The third theme has been tired for hundreds of years, having been aired out thoroughly by Aristotle in his two Ethics and also addressed by such luminaries of philosophy as Hegel and Isaiah Berlin.
Moreover, and this is really the greatest flaw of the novel, the first and most prominent of the thematic threads is offensive, and taking Grossman’s biography into account (elite public high-school, Harvard, some years at Yale, a stint of high-flying journalistic jobs, and a few attempts at writing novels) is disgustingly self-indulgent. It is challenging for me to imagine a more tiresome theme for a novel, than how hard it is to be good at nearly everything. Readers who struggle themselves to attain proficiency in their pursuits will be offended by the idea; equally well, readers who are talented but not ashamed or unhappy as a consequence will find the theme somewhat pathetic. And ultimately, that adjective sums up Quentin perfectly. He is disgustingly, aggravatingly and unswervingly pathetic. He is one of those characters of fiction whom you suspect initially might benefit from a fierce punch to the face, except that he receives it, and it does nothing to shake him out of his pathetic self-pitying stupor.
I think I may have liked the short story that Grossman could have written in lieu of this novel. Perhaps he thought tedium was a necessary ingredient to really convey the severe emotional challenge of brilliance, and his 416 page novel (running too long by several hundred pages) is certainly tedious.
Grossman’s novel fits better into a sub-genre of literary fiction, perhaps we can call it “fantastical realism”, than it fits into the genre of fantasy. As I said above, the fantastical elements are just there to embellish the severely mundane plot. Perhaps there are some great novels to be written in this sub-genre. ^The Magicians^ is not one of them. Efforts to fill that shelf with good books should be left in the hands of serious novelists, among whose number Grossman is not entitled to count himself. Grossman, whose command of the florid prose of the fantasy novelist is clumsy and repetitive, but not entirely without potential, should stick to writing straight fantasy.
Gloria I. Ortiz @ 2:24 pm
I had read a review of this book in a magazine and had some high expectations. However, it disappointed on every level. The novel is separated into four books, neither of which could have stood alone.
In book one, the main character, Quentin, who is amazingly smart (which we are told time and time again but is never shown), is invited by a mysterious paramedic. This test will determine whether he has the capability to become a magician. This test is later shown to be flawed, kind of like the SAT’s, in determining a person’s real capacity to succeed in the area of magic. However, Quentin passes the test, and is invited to go to a magical college. And here is where my first issue with the writer comes in: his inability to come up with an original idea. It did not feel as if it was a college, but an extension of high school. There were cliques determined by the “sorting”, a school-wide sport, and even prefects! While we were told they were learning different types of magic, we had no view into what they were learning. We learn early on that Quentin is a downer of a character, and his general hopelessness infiltrates the mood of the story. I literally plodded through the book, kind of how Quentin seemed to plod through life. The special project in the fourth year was interesting, but again, added no real purpose. This section also introduced another issue I had with the author’s way of writing. It seemed as if when he was writing he would realize that he forgot to add something in an earlier part of the story and instead of editing his own work, he would just throw it in at that time. It was distracting. However, the writer introduces some interesting characters, like Elliot, Josh, Janet, Penny and Alice, all of whom would have probably been better main characters. We are also introduced to the concept of the world of Fillory, which is actually pretty much like Narnia, and the Chatwin siblings, who are pretty much like the Pevensies.
In book 2, Quentin and his friends are in New York. They are typical “NYC Prep”-type graduates, who have too much time and money on their hands. Drugs and alcohol play a prominent role, as does sex. Betrayals and no real growth happens here, except amazingly enough, to a character named Penny, who has pretty much been ignored for the last 150 pages, or so. It is he that progresses the story to book 3, where they go to Fillory.
Book 3 seems to be where all of the action takes place. There are some battles, including the major battle; however, it is questionable whether the good guys win. Again, while magic plays a part, there is no sense that you are reading a magical battle.
Book 4 deals with the aftermath of the battle. Quentin has a revelation, but like every revelation he has throughout the book he abandons it with way too much ease. And surprisingly enough, he ends up in the same place as a person who was not given his opportunities ended up. And I, as the reader, is left wondering if whether it was that person’s story that should have been told.
Overall, a disappointing book that added nothing to the fantasy genre.