The Magicians

So I heard (and this may be inaccurate) that this was written by a disgruntled editor tired with the infantilization/white-washing of adolescence in YA fantasy. His response: Harry Potter + cocaine + sex + depression + Narnia, too.

Overall, it's an interesting-enough idea that you do keep reading. But I think the whole conceit would have worked better if it had had some wry wit and levity sprinkled in. As it stands, the story strives so hard to be sordid - our anti-Potter, Quentin, is self-pitying, self-loathing and a heavy drinker - that it feels a bit one-note. (At least, I found myself shaking my head with, “Oh, shut up already with the drama.”) Admittedly, Quentin goes through some pretty sick shit. Or, as Harry of Potter Puppet Pals laments, “I still dream of Dobby ripping my skin clean off!” Yes, this fantasy stuff is the stuff of PTSD, when you really think about it. But the entire plot seemed so constructed, so perfectly symmetrical, and so consistent in grinding Quentin down, that I never forgot about the author behind the curtain. I think the author, Grossman, would have made some better gains if he had lightened up a bit - allowed some three-dimensionality creep in, especially when he was establishing the college mates' matesiness. (A lot of that stuff was relegated to exposition-exposition-exposition.) That said, the mixture of overly-self-aware, overly-naturalistic young adultness with Lofty “Renaissance Faire” (Grossman's description, not mine) ACTING did feel strange at times - I wasn't sure how to react to anything that happened. It felt a little like if you dropped Ellen Page/Diablo Cody into Middle-earth and had them react. Hilarious!? Not really. Just jarring, and neither wondrous/Middle-earthy nor witty/Cody-y.

Grossman's writing, on the other hand, was pretty consistently good. I enjoyed his embellishments, even as they teetered into purple territory, if only because they often were quite witty. He relied pretty heavily on straight-up “telling”/exposition (long stretches of that), and his pacing was somewhat jerky (years fly by, then afternoons drag), and this may have kept me from falling into the story completely, but I always enjoyed it - at least, from a clinical perspective. The loose string of Penny, though - argh!