A much stranger and more surprising book than I expected. The first third is the "Harry Potter with added sex and drugs" I'd been told about. Enjoyable as such, although it hews so closely to the Rowling template that most of the time I was comparing every situation and plot development to its more famous predecessor. But things slowly start twisting off in a different direction, and by the halfway mark it had become another story altogether, as the school years are essentially an extended prologue.
The main story then becomes a kind of post-modern homage to another famous fantasy series (I won't spoil it by telling you which one). Some have complained that the "dark, edgy" (I word I despise) aspects sit uneasily with the fairytale side, but I think this is missing the point. In many fantasy novels the "real" world is often just another thinly disguised fantasy, so the clash in The Magicians between a much more convincingly and recognisably "real" (as much as that's possible in a work of fiction) world and a world of magic and make-believe is that much stronger, and this is necessary for Grossman to explore his central themes of frustration, desire, escape (including from oneself), power, and purpose.
The final chapter is weird and melancholy and compelling, and I'm not entirely convinced by the development in the final few pages, but I think it's a good sign I immediately wanted to start reading the sequel.