The Magicians
Ratings558
Average rating3.4
A pageturner, for sure. A nearly-grown-up malcontent escapé from the Gifted and Talented track makes his way to a magic school and then to not!Narnia? Sign me up!
The prose is tight, fun, unique, and rollicking. The worldbuilding is interesting – it knowingly sacrifices originality for wink-and-nudge callbacks, referencing Harry Potter, Narnia, Lord of the Rings, Earthsea, and (possibly) the film Pan's Labyrinth. The imagery was often extremely vivid, and immersive – I often felt like I was physically there, on the welters court, in a snowfield, cruising at altitude above the world. And I wanted desperately, at all times, to know what would happen next.
In the end, though, I was left feeling cold. Quentin didn't seem to experience much personal growth through the 400-some pages of the book, despite going through incredible numbers of unique and challenging experiences over four or five years in total. However, he seemd to accrue only trauma, and little wisdom, by the end of the book. I found him more difficult to like the more time passed in the story; surely, I kept thinking, now he'll begin to grow as a person. But it never really happened.
The other characters often felt thinly written, too. They were so dynamic that I wanted to know more about their inner lives, but these were only ever hinted at. They seemed to exist mostly as foils to or supports for Quentin, which in the case of Alice was particularly disappointing, given how her story ultimately shook out.
I enjoyed this, but I'm not sure I'd recommend it.
Alors que je suis totalement séduit par la série, que j'adore, le livre me laisse avec un énorme goût de ... « Meh ». J'ai eu énormément de mal à accrocher à l'ensemble. A mes yeux contrairement à d'autres critiques, Quentin n'est pas plus insupportable que cela en narrateur, c'est au contraire l'ensemble du récit qui manque de cœur. On sent qu'il y a matière à quelque chose d'interessant (ce que dieu merci la série a magistralement réussi) mais qui n'arrive malheureusement pas à être exploité correctement. Je poursuivrai l'aventure, mais plus par amour pour la série que pour ce que ce premier tome m'aura fait découvrir.
Would you be happy if you suddenly had everything you ever wanted? That question lies at the core of “The Magicians,” which is, if nothing else, a serious page-turner. It reads like Harry Potter, if Harry was an angsty teenager and these pages were his LiveJournal (Quentin is feeling: Dissatisfied). I felt that all of the rip-offs (sorry, “references”) were not exactly well-earned, despite the story's attempt to position itself for a more adult, post-YA reader base. The book's strongest points are curiously at odds, with Grossman's wonderfully inventive imagination constantly being desaturated by his dismayingly-realistic portrayal of a young adult in the throes of depression. The book's final chapters follow a fantastic plot twist with a extra-large heaping of indifference, and by the final pages I was left wondering why I should care about where the plot was going, when certainly no one else was.
I liked this. I don't have much to say about it, other than that; it was a quick, fun read, a nice take-off on the wizarding school experience that became so popular after Harry Potter exploded (though Diana Wynne Jones did it first!). The setting was great - I especially enjoyed the construction of magic, and how it was much more difficult than “waving a wand around” (very sly, Mr. Grossman) - and the characters were quirky and fun, if a bit awkward teenager-cum-early twenties nihilist. So yeah; pretty fun, I'd recommend it if you were looking for something light to read, but nothing to chew on or really love.
This was my second attempt at reading this book. The premise is so good, and I've wanted to read it for so long that I decided to give it another go. A magic college? Yes, please! However, the characters were kind of miserable to follow around (and I can deal with an unlikeable character), but none more so than the MC. Everything exciting happened either off the page or was told at such a distance that it felt more like a lecture. Even the magic and the magic school felt mundane and were almost painfully tedious. It's as though the author tried to write a grown-up Harry Potter (which is more or less what this book is billed as) and in the process sucked all the joy and magic out of it. It actually makes me a little sad, because this could have been so amazing if done well.
I was fooled into reading this by all the stellar reviews, and book jacket description. As I read the book I wondered if this would be the time I was so disgusted with a book that I would throw it. Which in my mind is something I DON'T do because I respect books too much to do that. The only thing preventing me from throwing it at a wall this time was that it was a library loan. I'm not going to talk about it much besides the fact that my loathing for this book is deep. The only reason I finished it was it was a book club choice. Otherwise it'd be on my books I despised and refuse to finish pile.
It's like a depressing harry potter book, sometimes I just felt like throwing it away, but I'm glad I finished it, if mainly for the unique way it handled your standard magic fantasy tropes, I still enjoyed the ride. It's a matter of perspective I suppose, if you hate depressing, whiny draco-like characters, you're not going to have fun with this one, although objectively it was a good fantasy.
Throw Harry Potter, Narnia, and college angst in a pot. Add in violence, death, sex, and you've The Magicians. Liked that it doesn't dumb things down. Dislike that it seems like a few books in one.
I read a review someone that touted this book as ‘what Harry Potter could have been'. Yea, if you took out all the wonder and excitement from Harry Potter and replaced it with melancholy.
if Harry Potter and Narnia had a 19 year old spawn. Great merger of different types of fantasy.
I think few people would turn down a chance to check out a favorite fictional place, even with a strong chance that it'd turn out to be wildly different than you'd imagined. But the sexist, racist and ableist streams running through this make it super tedious to read.
There are interesting moments in this, until they're done with school. The characters are just so unlikable and spoiled and immature. I understand they're all early 20s when they go to Not-Narnia and most people are making very stupid choices then, and a lot of “well how do I actually live as an adult?” missteps are understandable. But every main character seems set up to be as unlikable and un-interesting as possible - which is actually difficult to achieve. Quentin's misogynistic, everyone's arrogant and bored, it was just impossible to care about any of them after they finished with the school. (And they weren't interesting before they finished.)
The writing quality seemed super inconsistent. I'm glad the author apparently got help for his own depression after writing this, but it would be hard to find a book that makes obvious depression in characters less sympathetic than this does - which is sad, as a reader struggling with that. I'd suggest avoiding this entirely, if you also struggle.
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.
Aggressively man written. “Huge bosoms” mentioned, no joke, about 5 times in the first 100 pages. I stopped counting after that
NO PLOT whatsoever. I dnf around page 200 when there still wasn't any plot and more strange sexism against the women characters. I started skimming the book and came across a line that said “the thick plottens” so I guess this book was a really shitty comedy? I dont know. Hot garbage. Wouldn't recommend.
I thought the writing style was pretty interesting and new. A lot of nuance there. The teenage angst bit gets a bit wearing though. The overall story arc was also fairly dry until the end, but I found the writing style kept me hooked.
It's kinda like two books. One while they are in school, when they seem like pleasant people, but there is no real plot, it's just stuff happening like Dazed and Confused. Then one after they graduate where there is slightly more plot and all of a sudden they are all assholes. I won't be reading the next book.
Reviews of this book seem to me to be penalized by the comparison made to an “Harry Potter” for adults, which is not applicable at all.
This is a fantasy book, which happens to have a University of magic, and that's where the similarities end.
I found it interesting that the characters have flaws, fears and insecurities, which should be normal but rarely happens in this literary genre.
I enjoyed the story and would have enjoyed it even more if I were a fan of “The Chronicles of Narnia”.
A young man, a senior in high school, is on his way with a friend to an interview for admission to Princeton when he is diverted to a different sort of interview: an entrance examination for Brakebills College, a school of magic. With his acceptance into the college, Quentin Coldwater leaves behind an unsatisfying life where he felt like a misfit and enters a life where he is surrounded by magically talented oddballs like himself. The first half of the book deals with Quentin's time at the college, and the second half involves a magical land called Fillory, which Quentin and his friends thought was only a fictional land from a series of childhood fantasy books.
This is a coming of age novel, but it is not uplifting or heartwarming the way many coming of age novels are. Quentin is a bit world-weary and the atmosphere is dark. Magic does not automatically bring happiness. The challenge Quentin and his friends deal with is to find a meaningful life in spite of not needing to work hard for the basics. In the course of the book they contend with actual monsters and interpersonal relationship problems, and things don't always turn out well.
I enjoyed this and will probably read more of the series.
It is pretty bonkers how different this is from the show. Both are enjoyable in entirely different ways.