The Magicians

For the first half of this book I was really enjoying it...but after the characters leave school the plot kind of loses momentum and changes direction in a way that feels rushed and aimless and left me not really caring what happened. I still enjoyed it overall, and there were a lot of ideas that were fun and interesting to explore re: “gifted” kids who grow up reading fantasy books and imagining being the hero...and then it happens and we see how that might actually go.

I also appreciated the more “realistic” magic school context - where the classes are difficult and it's at the university level (although it did feel like the author kept forgetting that, describing things that sounded like high school, and then having a character go “sometimes it felt like we were still in high school” to explain it). And the idea that people with magical powers might go on to live lives of ennui because they don't have to work for anything is an interesting proposal, if bleak.

I see people raising the criticism that the characters don't really learn any lessons - and I think the issue is more so that they just don't develop all that much. I don't need them to learn powerful lessons and become unrealistically heroic people but to at least...idk, change a bit. To make the plot seem like it meant something. Because otherwise the plot felt very low stakes (even the big bad monster at the end didn't really seem to pose a threat to this world? He mostly posed a threat to a fantasy realm that the author did not spend enough time on developing for me to really care about that much).

I've seen this described as “Holden Caulfield goes to Hogwarts” and that is quite accurate. Although I think if it actually had been that I might have liked it slightly better.

Ultimately there was a lot I liked about this and I'm glad I read it, but I wish I had liked it more.