The Magicians

The Magicians has an interesting premise: that magic isn't fun. Instead of being an enchanting world filled with happy little goat men and stair-dwelling orphans, the magic academy of The Magicians is populated by academic overachievers, the hard-working nerds who can master the ancient languages and arcane hand gestures required by magic. This is all well and good, and the first 150 pages or so of the novel, which deal with the arrival of a new batch of magic students and their struggles to integrate into a strange new world (as well as the difficulties they have dealing with new levels of academic and intellectual competition) are very interesting. Unfortunately, it takes a good long while for the book to get out of the good students do well in school portion. There's a dead zone of the novel that lasts another 150 pages. For a book that's 400 pages, that's not good. The novel does pick up towards the end, when the characters actually get to start adventuring and using their magicks. I suppose the novel is done in by its own premise. If studying magic isn't as fun as Harry Potter makes it out to be, then a novel about students of this boring magic probably won't be all that interesting, once the novelty of the premise wears off.