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The Magicians

(The Magicians, #1)

Lev Grossman (Goodreads Author)

3.49 · Rating details · 190,490 Ratings · 19,888 Reviews

A thrilling and original coming-of-age novel for adults about a young man practicing magic in the real world.

Quentin Coldwater is brilliant but miserable. A senior in high school, he’s still secretly preoccupied with a series of fantasy novels he read as a child, set in a magical land called Fillory. Imagine his surprise when he finds himself unexpectedly admitted to a ver ...more

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Hardcover, 402 pages

Published August 11th 2009 by Viking

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Aug 11, 2009 D. Pow rated it it was ok

Shelves: fantasy-sf-horror

This book has been hard-pedaled as an adult Harry Potter and it is-but with a soulless little git like Draco Malfoy as the main protagonist. Grossman doesn't get to the genuine transformative joy possible in books about other worlds and magic, the metaphorical kick one can bring to the reader. This is a cold and sterile book for people who think themselves too sophisticated for genre fiction, a sub-section of the reading public that, I suspect, includes the author.

To be fair there are certain th This book has been hard-pedaled as an adult Harry Potter and it is-but with a soulless little git like Draco Malfoy as the main protagonist. Grossman doesn't get to the genuine transformative joy possible in books about other worlds and magic, the metaphorical kick one can bring to the reader. This is a cold and sterile book for people who think themselves too sophisticated for genre fiction, a sub-section of the reading public that, I suspect, includes the author.

To be fair there are certain things Grossman does well. There are isolated set-pieces of violence and magical ritual gone wrong, that are thrilling, scary and visceral. He also is very clever at conveying the huge rush of empowerment a disenfranchised teen would feel when uncovering then honing magical powers. The old riff of a nobody becoming somebody is done well here, even though it’s crouched in dry, clinical and mechanistic terms that undermine its effectiveness.

And that’s the rub here. For every scene of terror and beauty, there are two that are clumsy and lame. Grossman presents certain key plot elements so obtusely that they hit like a feather instead of a hammer. He condenses action at the wrong times, has pivotal stuff occur off-stage as it were and just doesn’t deliver from page to page either on the commercial fiction scale or one grander.

Traditional Fantasy Novels power(as well as their stodgy childishness) lie to a degree in their pedagogical function. They are to an extent primers for young people on how to behave, how to become a more effective human being, how to be brave in the face of adversity and to learn to be selfless on occasion even though ones adolescent genes(and jeans) are screaming for pure selfish, solipsistic, I am the center of the universe, expression.

So there is a journey up Mount Doom by sad, wounded Frodo and stout, brave Sam. And Harry Potter puts his nuts on the line over and over against that nose-less wonder, Voldemort, secure in the knowledge that Ron and Hermione always have his back. They are, in the course of their journeys, becoming braver and stronger and less rooted in their myopic view of things. In Grossman’s novel, the protagonist starts out as a selfish turd, segue ways to more selfish turdism, and then does a sideways double back flip into being (you guessed it) a selfish turd. This is refreshing to an extent-how like real life it is-people seldom change unless confronted by trauma or some extreme events. But in Grossman’s hands it is just one more nail in the coffin, taking an eminently worthwhile premise(adult Harry Potter, twisted Narnia) and magically transforming it through bad craft into utter shit.
...more

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Feb 15, 2012 Nataliya rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Shelves: 2013-reads

'You can't just decide to be happy.'
'No, you can't. But you can sure as hell decide to be miserable. Is that what you want?'

The answer to this, as far as Quentin Coldwater is concerned, is a resounding 'YES!' At any stage of his life. He makes Holden Caulfield look like a bundle of sunshine. He makes Charlie Brown resemble an embodiment of optimism and positivity. Eeyore the Donkey is brimming with life force compared to our perpetually unhappy hero.

'...You couldn't have everything. Or at lea

'You can't just decide to be happy.'
'No, you can't. But you can sure as hell decide to be miserable. Is that what you want?'

'...You couldn't have everything. Or at least the available evidence pointed overwhelmingly to that conclusion.'

...

Not only will he always think of a cup as being half-empty, but he will drive himself crazy wondering who the hell drank half of it to make it so. Hand him his deepest dream on a silver platter - and five minutes later he will be whining in a decidedly disillusioned fashion about how it fails to make him happy. Disillusionment and dissatisfaction are how he operates.

If ennui were to be a superpower, Quentin Coldwater would have been Superman, propelled into space by the power of his constant negativity.

...

'All of it just confirmed his belief that his real life, the life he should be living, had been mislaid through some clerical error by the cosmic bureaucracy. This couldn't be it. It had been diverted somewhere else, to somebody else, and he'd been issued this shitty substitute faux life instead.'

In 'The Magicians' Lev Grossman goes against the popular device of literature - the allure of wish fulfillment, the deep-rooted belief that once you find that secret place in life where you belong things will magically be alright and you will be happy. (*)

(*) Granted, he goes against the literary mainstream while at the same time using the obviously commercially successful formula of a young protagonist with a newly found magical ability who suddenly finds himself in an equivalent of a British boarding school (well, in this case, a college. In Upstate New York. But it's still a British boarding school, really). (view spoiler)

So it seems that Grossman tries to get out of mainstream while firmly staying in the commercially successful mainstream. Mmmmm-kay.

Anyhow, unlike what we are supposed to expect, Quentin, miserable and disillusioned in the quasi-grown-up way that quite a few teens seem to be, does not find happiness in his unexpected admission to Brakebills, a magical college. Apparently he learns that - suprise! - you cannot just be handed happiness, that you actually need to put some effort into it, and that you can easily poison anything, even a fairy-tale, if you approach anything from the vantage point of pseudo-sophisticated negativity.

'Every ambition he'd ever had in his life had been realized the day he was admitted to Brakebills, and he was struggling to formulate a new one with any kind of practical specificity.'

Actually, the aura of overly disillusioned ennui-infused pseudo-sophistication in the faux-adult way (the way that tends to overstate almost explicitly that it's SO NOT Harry Potter and the like) permeates this entire book, getting in the way of pacing, character development and ultimately many readers' enjoyment.

As Quentin mechanically stumbles through his four years of quasi-British education in the self-pitying perpetually drunken haze, the plot stammers all over the place, never picking up a consistent pace, never leading to the reader actually caring about what happens to this set of miserable characters. So many situations are introduced and incompletely dealt with, without much consequence and/or resolution. So many potentially interesting storylines are never pursued further, with Grossman choosing to focus on the less exciting parts of this story. And a belated infusion of plot about three quarters into the book, after a long and befuzzling journey through Quentin's magical education, comes way overdue and at this point fails to impress and, frankly, begins to irritate.

All this while Quentin, despite his apparently staggering intellect, acts like a frustratingly clueless idiot and makes you want to reach into the book and shake some sense into him. And all of this just to see him come to even greater depths of self-pity and annoying in their platitude 'revelations':

'He wasn't in a safe little story where wrongs were automatically righted; he was still in the real world, where bad bitter things happened for no reason, and people paid for things that weren't their fault.'

And with this deep realization, Quentin gets this timeless piece of advice that summarizes the entire point of this story in addition to the message that things tend to suck quite badly (insert sarcasm here if you'd like):

'You found out, didn't you? There's no getting away from yourself. Not even in Fillory.'

Hey, I do not mind reading about the characters who are childish and stupid and very self-centered. What I expect is that in a series of events (a.k.a. plot) they will actually grow and change and learn something - something to make me feel that it was worth reading the book for. Even Holden Caulfield seems to change and grow up a bit, despite his uber-teenageness.

Quentin and his friends, on the other hand, do not appear to grow up in any way; they are contentedly stuck in the perpetual aimlessness and inflated self-pity, all while flaunting their oh-so-special disullusionment which reminds me of pointless drunk 'adult' college conversations that lead nowhere - and I'm left a bit annoyed and irritated by it all.

Anyway, 2.5 stars. Not a horrible book, but not that good either. Just kinda 'meh', honestly. It left me not really caring about what happened or what will happen next - and that's not really a good sign. Quentin can brood himself into oblivion - I don't care much.

'For just one second, look at your life and see how perfect it is. Stop looking for the next secret door that is going to lead you to your real life. Stop waiting. This is it: there's nothing else. It's here, and you'd better decide to enjoy it or you're going to be miserable wherever you go, for the rest of your life, forever.'

...more

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Jan 13, 2015 Emily May rated it it was ok

Shelves: fantasy, 2016

I know this is a thing us bibliophiles really shouldn't say EVER, but: I think the show is way better.

Don't hurt me.

When I started watching the SYFY version of The Magicians and actually really liked it, I made a quick mental note to go back and read this book first before I got too far into it. Because the book can usually be relied on to be better, I wanted to experience it in written format first. In this case, though, the book makes the story more boring, the characters downright insufferabl ...more

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Nov 25, 2012 Khanh, first of her name, mother of bunnies rated it really liked it

If you will, for just one second, look at your life and see how perfect it is. Stop looking for the next secret door that is going to lead you to your real life. Stop waiting. This is it: there’s nothing else. It’s here, and you’d better decide to enjoy it or you’re going to be miserable wherever you go, for the rest of your life, forever.”

“You can’t just decide to be happy.”

“No, you can’t. But you can sure as hell decide to be miserable. Is that what you want? Do you want to be the asshole who

If you will, for just one second, look at your life and see how perfect it is. Stop looking for the next secret door that is going to lead you to your real life. Stop waiting. This is it: there’s nothing else. It’s here, and you’d better decide to enjoy it or you’re going to be miserable wherever you go, for the rest of your life, forever.”

“You can’t just decide to be happy.”

“No, you can’t. But you can sure as hell decide to be miserable. Is that what you want? Do you want to be the asshole who went to Fillory and was miserable there? Even in Fillory? Because that’s who you are right now."

Brakebills is like Harry Potter for assholes, and to that, I say bravo because that's a fucking fantastic thing. Yes, Harry Potter was a pretty dark series by its end, but it started as a children's tale. The characters are admirable. Brave. Courageous. They are imperfect, but they're often models, paragons. Real life isn't like that. Real people are jerks, and, let's admit it, we'll do anything to get ahead. We lie. We cheat. We steal. This is the American dream, and this is what the (American) characters in this book represent. The main character in this book is a depressed, over-analytical little shit and that's just fine, because I'm a glass-half-empty kind of person, and he resonates with me.

Are the main characters in this book nice people? Fuck no. Maybe that's why I like them. I'm an asshole. Let me clarify that. I'm not deliberately mean. I am not a jerk, but "asshole" to me, means you do what it takes to get ahead in life. It's all good to be meek, to be gentle. It's fine, but it's not going to get you anywhere in life. Studies have shown that leaders are, in fact, people who are jerks. Sure, you can be charming, charismatic, but everyone needs a little assholery in their life, however well-concealed.

If you're content with normalcy and a quiet, calm life without stress? Great! Good for you. I admire you, and I say that with neither condescension nor sarcasm. But a nice, quiet life where one doesn't want to get ahead, where one doesn't feel the need to stand up for one's self is not for everyone. It's not for me. I need stress in my life. I need power. And that, my friend, is why I like the characters in this book. They're assholes, they're not perfect, they're stupid at times, they're more Slytherin than Gryffindor, and they're the symbol of 'Murica, y'all. This ain't your British boarding school.

The main character in this book is a brilliant kid who stumbles (literally) into the Magical school of Brakebills. There is no magical legacy here. There are no magical families. Brakebills is effort only, talent only. Either you got magical powers or you're just a Muggle. Quentin passes the magical test (not ever having known that such a magical world existed), and is admitted into the school. Harry Potter jumped at the thought of entry into Hogwarts. Quentin: not so much.

Suppose it really was a school for magic. Was it any good? What if he’d stumbled into some third-tier magic college by accident? He had to think practically. He didn’t want to be committing himself to some community college of sorcery when he could have Magic Harvard or whatever.

Skepticism! Yeah!

The characters in this book do not come from all walks of life. They're the best of the best. The crème de la crème. Throw them all together and you've got the equivalent of a bunch of pre-med studenst killing each other to get 0.1% higher in class. Quentin is fucking brilliant, the best in his school in the normal world. It's not going to matter here.

"Are you smart?”

There was no non-embarrassing answer to this.

“I guess.”

“Don’t worry about it, everybody here is. If they even brought you in for the Exam you were the smartest person in your school, teachers included. Everyone here was the cleverest little monkey in his or her particular tree. Except now we’re all in one tree together. It can be a shock. Not enough coconuts to go round. You’ll be dealing with your equals for the first time in your life, and your betters. You won’t like it.

There's no Harry and Ron and Hermione here. There is friendship, yes, but there's always a spirit of competition here, because they're all the best striving to be the best among the best.

They were quiet and intense, always eyeing each other assessingly, as if they were trying to figure out who—if it came right down to it—would take out who in an intellectual death match. They didn’t congregate overmuch—they were always civil but rarely warm. They were used to competing and used to winning. In other words, they were like Quentin, and Quentin wasn’t used to being around people like himself.

There's not much playing, a lot of studying. Friendship does not come easily. Harry met Ron and bonded on the Hogwarts Express. It's a much bumpier road to friendship here.

“Listen to me carefully,” Fogg was saying. “Most people are blind to magic. They move through a blank and empty world. They’re bored with their lives, and there’s nothing they can do about it. They’re eaten alive by longing, and they’re dead before they die.

“But you live in the magical world, and it’s a great gift. And if you want to get killed here, you’ll find plenty of opportunities without killing each other.”

The magical system in ths book is mechanical, methodical. There are no muttered phrases, no cute names for spells. Instead of a visible villain like Voldemort, the evil, the terror in this book are much less visible, but by no means less effective. I've rarely read a phrase in a book that has more accurately described a feeling of a panic attack.

There was something odd about the man’s appearance—Quentin couldn’t seem to make out his face. For a second he couldn’t figure out why, and then he realized it was because there was a small leafy branch in front of it that partially obscured his features. The branch came from nowhere. It was attached to nothing. It just hung there in front of the man’s face.

Then Professor March stopped speaking and froze in place.

Alice had stopped, too. The room was silent. A chair creaked. Quentin couldn’t move either. There was nothing restraining him, but the line between his brain and his body had been cut.

He circled Professor March. There was something strange about the way he moved, something too fluid about his gait. When he walked into the light, Quentin saw that he wasn’t quite human, or if he had been once he wasn’t anymore. Below the cuffs of his white shirt his hands had three or four too many fingers.

Fifteen minutes crawled by, then half an hour. Quentin couldn’t turn his head, and the man moved in and out of his field of view. He puttered with Professor March’s equipment. He toured the auditorium. He took out a knife and pared his fingernails. Objects stirred and shifted restlessly in place whenever he walked too near them. He picked up an iron rod from March’s demonstration table and bent it like a piece of licorice.

Quentin’s fear came and went and came back in huge sweating rushes, crashing waves. He was sure something very bad was happening, it just wasn’t clear yet exactly what.

I know there are a lot of people who hated this book. 3.6 is a pretty crap rating for a book of this popularity, but I loved it, and here's why. The main character is smart, he wants to get ahead, he is pessimistic, he is a skeptic. Why is this a bad thing? What's wong with looking at everything through

The world is not all rainbows and roses. We need people who see the glass as half-empty. Fantasy is great, I absolutely love Harry Potter, but there's always too much of a good thing. Main characters do not always have to be admirable. Anti-heroes are awesome, too. Selfishness, narcissism, misanthropy: these are not necessarily negative traits because they make a character human. Are you perfect? I know I'm not. I know I have my dark moments. I know that I hate people 97% of the time because humans are dumb. It's not wrong to want to get ahead in life. It's not wrong to want to be the best.

The world is not a magical place. It is filled with corruption and people who will step on you if given the chance. Survival of the fittest means you have to be a jerk at times; you have to stand up for yourself.

That is why I like this book. It is dark, it is pessimistic, it views fantasy and magic in a more methodical, more sensible manner. It is realistic. If you want your rainbows and magical lions that talk, go back to Narnia. I'll take my Brakebills. ...more

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Aug 22, 2011 Simeon rated it did not like it

Shelves: utter-shite, fantasy

The story of a quasi-sociopathic high school cretin who mouth-breathes his way into an exclusive fantasy club of anhedonic wizards - replete with bad writing and worse story-telling.

Enjoy.

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Feb 06, 2017 Anne rated it really liked it

Shelves: kindle, magic-stuff, read-in-2017

Pretend Harry Potter was a bit of a narcissistic douchebag, and all of his friends were whiny a-holes who drank too much.

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Now pretend that they crammed 5 years worth of their Hogwarts adventures into one book. Except most of the adventures are fairly mundane, with a few exceptions sprinkled here and there.

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Then pretend at the very end of said book, they all took a trip to a warped version of Narnia...with mixed results.

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Now, if you're the type of reader who absolutely has to like the main character ...more

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Sep 16, 2010 Mike (the Paladin) rated it it was ok

Shelves: fantasy, urban-fantasy

*Originally reviewed in Sept. 2010*

I have a Goordreads friend who likes this book. He expressed a thought that I might not. While not wholly correct about my take he came pretty close.:

Well, first Stephen, you're right in a way, I don't like stories that are "downers just to be downers". The nihilistic attitude you see so often. I don't like the (as I've said before) "life is crap and then you die" story. So many today seem to think that for a story to have any depth it has to be deeply depressi ...more

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Aug 22, 2009 Dan Schwent rated it it was amazing

Shelves: fantasy, favorites

Quentin Coldwater is an unhappy teen, eyeing up an uncertain future in college. He's secretly in love with his friend Julia. Nothing else really matters to him except the Fillory and Further series of books he's loved since childhood. Imagine how he feels when a seamingly routine college interview drops an undiscovered Fillory book in his grasp and leads him to Brakebills, a college of wizardry, and worlds beyond...

First of all, this isn't Harry Potter for adults, no matter how much people want ...more

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Feb 20, 2010 Jason Pettus rated it did not like it

(Reprinted from the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com:]. I am the original author of this essay, as well as the owner of CCLaP; it is not being reprinted illegally.)

(UPDATE: After reading other reviews online, I realized that I could've made my point even more succinctly by simply saying the following: "Oh, wonderful -- another dour academe writes another fussy, joyless genre exercise, designed specifically for MFA circle-jerks who consider themselves 'above' such si (Reprinted from the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com:]. I am the original author of this essay, as well as the owner of CCLaP; it is not being reprinted illegally.)

(UPDATE: After reading other reviews online, I realized that I could've made my point even more succinctly by simply saying the following: "Oh, wonderful -- another dour academe writes another fussy, joyless genre exercise, designed specifically for MFA circle-jerks who consider themselves 'above' such silly frippery. Yeah, that's exactly what the world needed." I like that review much more than my original one below, which as commenters have already noted, sounds like I didn't get the fact that Grossman deliberately ripped off the Harry Potter storyline, precisely to make the point that such a world would actually be fussy and joyless. I get that Grossman deliberately ripped off Harry Potter; my point is that he's an untalented f-cking hack for doing so, and that such a thing is profoundly offensive to those of us who are adult genre fans, and who do enjoy the Harry Potter books precisely for their sense of joy and wonder.)

Regular readers know that I mostly judge books here on relative terms -- relative to the author's experience, relative to my natural interest in its subject, relative to the amount of money that was spent promoting that book. And that's why I was so excited to get my hands on Lev Grossman's The Magicians, one of the most heavily hyped books of last autumn, because it comes with an excellent pedigree: written by the main book critic for Time magazine, it is purportedly an inventive urban-fantasy tale described by many as "Harry Potter for grown-ups" (or technically, "Harry Potter meets Narnia for grown-ups," the milieu of each taking up either half of Grossman's own novel), and with a whole series of gushing blurbs on the back cover from a whole series of impressive authors, with no less than Junot Diaz calling it "stirring, complex and adventurous." (Of course, this nicely illustrates as well the inherent ethical problems with a book reviewer writing and publishing their own creative work; because who's to say that any of these quoted authors actually meant any of the praise they give, and aren't instead terrified of Grossman doing a hatchet job on their own books for refusing to play along? That's why I'm such a stickler for the idea that professional book reviewers should never, ever publish their own creative work in the field of whatever type of literature they're paid to review, and why a big red flag goes up in my head every time one of them does.)

And it's for all these reasons that this book's massive shortcomings made me not just disappointed but actively infuriated; because when people say that this is "Harry Potter for grown-ups," they mean that it is a literal beat-for-beat plagiaristic ripoff of the Harry Potter books, such a thoroughly naked steal of someone else's ideas that I'm legitimately surprised that JK Rowling hasn't sued Grossman back into the stone age. Don't believe me? Well, just look at the evidence -- it's about a group of teenagers who receive mysterious invitations to attend a magic school, housed in a crumbling gothic castle located several hours north of a major metropolitan area, hidden from the public by powerful illusion spells and full of delightfully quirky tics like moving staircases and disappearing doors, overseen by a wise but childlike white-bearded authority figure, who just happens to own a magical map showing the location of all residents at any given moment, where for some reason all renovations seem to have been banned somewhere around the middle of the Victorian Age, which for an equally inexplicable reason has adopted both the structure and even the terms of the British educational system despite being an American school, whose students enjoy on the weekends an intercollegiate sport that's much like the magical version of a human game, and where it turns out that spell-casting is actually a fairly tedious academic process of memorization and proper inflection. J-sus, Grossman, you untalented hack, why don't you throw in a Golden F-cking Snitch while you're at it?

Now, I acknowledge that genre novels by nature are always going to share a certain amount of elements with other novels in that genre, and in fact I have no problem with that when it's done well and used merely as a starting point; for an excellent example, see Susanna Clarke's fantastic Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, which takes a very Potteresque concept (magic actually exists in open hiding all around us) but instead does something strikingly original with the idea, creating an entire millennium-long fake history of the UK and then focusing in on the dysfunctional fuddy-duddys who are the masters of this made-up applied science. But in The Magicians, Grossman presents not even a single solitary idea that he didn't steal from someone else, essentially making the whole thing feel like the unnecessary fan-fiction product of some 17-year-old goth girl who's jealous that Rowling beat her to the punch; and while that would be fine if this actually was a piece of xeroxed fan fiction from a 17-year-old goth girl with no original ideas of her own, it's f-cking inexcusable when it's the most heavily hyped book of the year, and comes from the main book critic of Time f-cking magazine. J-sus, what a godd-mned waste of my time this derivative piece of sh-t was. F-CK YOU, LEV GROSSMAN, for stealing a week of my life that I will never get back.

Out of 10: 0.0 ...more

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Apr 04, 2018 Emily (Books with Emily Fox) rated it liked it · review of another edition

(3.5? I might change it later) After deliberation I decided that the best way to describe this book is...

A muggle born Draco Malfoy who grew up reading about Narnia, learns that magic is real and Narnia might be too...

I think my main issue with his book was my own expectations. Too often people describe this book as Harry Potter books for grown ups and it's just not how I see it. The main character (all the characters actually!) is a depressed, "Iamverysmart" young adult who gets to go to a magi ...more

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Oct 07, 2011 Jeffrey Keeten rated it it was amazing

Shelves: book-to-film

I passed on reading this book when it first came out because I was underwhelmed by the author's first book Codex. The excessively negative reviews about The Magicians peaked my interest. The complaints these reviewers had actually made me want to read the book. The positive reviews confirmed my growing suspicion that I should read this book. Although I am late to the party I must say I am glad that I overcame my initial reluctance because I loved this book.

Unfortunately this book was marketed a I passed on reading this book when it first came out because I was underwhelmed by the author's first book Codex. The excessively negative reviews about The Magicians peaked my interest. The complaints these reviewers had actually made me want to read the book. The positive reviews confirmed my growing suspicion that I should read this book. Although I am late to the party I must say I am glad that I overcame my initial reluctance because I loved this book.

Unfortunately this book was marketed as an adult book for Harry Potter fans. There is some truth in this marketing scheme, but too many people who are ardent Harry Potter fans are not the proper readership for this book. One reviewer said how much he despised this book, but that the "hipsters" would like it. What! Wait! does that mean I'm a hipster reader. I'm finally... cool. I probably just lost my hipster status using the word cool.

I was afraid that this would be a year one, year two, etc. magical school book series. Not so. Grossman smokes through 5 years of Brakebills in quick order giving us highlights, but leaving a lean script that keeps the pages turning.

One of my favorite scenes is when the main character Quentin Coldwater and his friends are turning into geese to fly to Brakebills South in Antarctica. "Days, weeks, maybe months and years passed. Who knew or cared? Quentin had never experienced peace and satisfaction like this. He forgot about his human past, about Brakebills or Brooklyn. Why hang on to them? He had no name anymore. He barely had any individual identity, and he didn't want one. What good were such human artifacts? He was an animal. His job was to turn bugs and plants into muscle and fat and feathers and flight and miles logged. He served only his flock-fellows and the wind and the laws of Darwin. And he served whatever force sent him gliding along the invisible magnetic rails, always southward, down the rough, stony coast of Peru, spiny Andes on his port, the sprawling blue Pacific on his starboard. He had never been happier." I actually found myself really thinking about what it would be like to be a goose.

Professor Mayakovsky the teacher at Brakebills South really turns boys and girls into men and women. It is the boot camp of magic. Mayakovsky sums it up to Quentin on his first day. "You need to do more than memorize, Quentin. You must learn the principles of magic with more than your head. You must learn them with your bones, with your blood, your liver, your heart, your deek. He grabbed his crotch through his dressing gown and gave it a shake." Long before the reader gets to this point they will be well aware that they are not hanging out in Hogwarts, but I think this sentence illustrates the difference in approach that Grossman takes with Brakebills.

Grossman doesn't shy away from Harry Potter. He actually makes a couple of references to the Hogwarts series. They are books in the evolving reality of the world he creates for this book. Our heroes, be they too human, moments of bravery wrapped around acts of cowardice finally arrive in Fillory. I was least interest in this portion of the book which makes me wonder if I will like the follow up book The Magician King. I've underestimated Grossman before so at some point I will give it a try.

Most of the time I didn't even realize that I was reading a fantasy book. The characters reminded me of people that I went to college with. Grossman actually does a good job developing the characters. They are all interesting, flawed, very human characters that again made me believe in the reality of this world. I suppose because there is sex and copious alcohol consumption, although not flagrantly so, reviewers have made comparisons to Bret Easton Ellis. I will say all of the sex was in the context of the plot and even sometimes gave the plot a proper nudge. I have also seen comparisons to Donna Tartt and to me that is a closer comparison because the characters had more personality than what I experienced in Less than Zero.

If you are looking for Harry Potter even an adult Harry Potter you should probably give this book a pass. If you are looking for just a damn good edgy book with well developed characters and a compelling plot than pick up a copy and start reading. Before you know it you will have consumed 100 pages and will be stealing time from the rest of your life to finish the remaining pages. ...more

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Sep 12, 2009 Kasia rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Shelves: high-fantasy, lovely-covers

I was ready to love this book, it's supposed to be Harry Potter like but more gritty, more realistic, more substantial, and I guess it is and I still like the idea of it. And yet this book did not work for me. I was really patient with it, I downplayed the initial irritation of incorporating the entire Potter premise. It's one thing to borrow bits and pieces, it's another to rip off a whole concept leaving out a few bits here and there and dressing up the rest. But since I'm a sucker for fantasy ...more

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Mar 13, 2012 nostalgebraist rated it did not like it

Shelves: anger-inducingly-bad, fantasy

This was in a special category for me: books whose positive reception make me question my membership in the human race. After finishing it I stared at the glowing blurbs on the back, looked up some positive reviews online, and thought, who are these people? What could they have been thinking? How could they possibly be so different from me? After that it took a few days of solid social interaction with good friends to convince me that I actually had something in common with my fellow humans -- t ...more

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Sep 16, 2010 Stephen rated it it was amazing

Shelves: ebooks, audiobook, darker-than-you-think, fantasy, magic-schools, dark-and-gritty, magical-realism

5.0 stars. I ABSOLUTELY LOVED THIS BOOK!!!! I know that not everyone agrees with this sentiment for this book, but I was greatly impressed by it. From the very beginning of this story, I got the distinct feeling that Grossman was going to be taking "the less travelled path" in his fantasy novel. While I have seen a lot of comparisons to other stories (some of which are quite intentional by the author) this book is certainly ITS OWN BOOK.

The novel is really two very different and distinct storie 5.0 stars. I ABSOLUTELY LOVED THIS BOOK!!!! I know that not everyone agrees with this sentiment for this book, but I was greatly impressed by it. From the very beginning of this story, I got the distinct feeling that Grossman was going to be taking "the less travelled path" in his fantasy novel. While I have seen a lot of comparisons to other stories (some of which are quite intentional by the author) this book is certainly ITS OWN BOOK.

The novel is really two very different and distinct stories that I thought worked together very well. The first half to two-thirds of the book is the story of Quentin Coldwater, a brilliant, angst-ridden, self-involved high school senior. Or, put another way, a pretty normal teenager that happens to be intellectually gifted. While Quentin is on his way to be interviewed for acceptance at Princeton, he is (through a series of circumstances I won't spoil) given the opportunity to enroll in a secret university that teaches magic. You can tell from that description how the Harry Potter comparisons come up. However, this "magic" school and the students that attend there are portrayed (quite effectively in my opinion) as the kind of personalities you would expect to find at a college campus for gifted teenagers. Common threads running through the group based on some shared intellectual capabilities, but otherwise a very eclectic group from a variety of backgrounds and all dealing with their own very real issues. In addition, the teaching of magic is shown to be a extremely difficult and an often tedious endeavor. I thought this aspect of the book was superbly done and made for compelling reading.

One other interesting (to me at least) aspect of Quentin that I think bears mentioning is that he is a HUGE FANTASY FANBOY and so the discovery that magic is real makes him believe that all of his dreams are going to come true and that he is going to be able to live out the dream of being a part of a real life fantasy adventure. I can imagine their are a number of us that could relate to that. However, reality, even one with magic, is never as easy or as fun as Quentin's books make them out and so he finds himself disappointed and disillusioned a lot. In fact, his extensive knowledge of other fantasy worlds actually makes the disappointment more acute.

Frankly, I don't see how it could be any other way and that this relationship to fiction and reality is one of the central themes that Grossman was exploring in this novel. Thus, I found one of the book's central messages to be that part of growing up is reconciling your childhood dreams with the realities of everyday life, AND STILL FINDING A WAY TO BE HAPPY!!! Some people found this to be a sad or depressing message, but I didn't find it that way at all. I think we all see the world differently now then we did when we were kids and that doesn't mean we are less happy.

Anyway, Quentin's favorite fantasy series is about a land called Fillory which very intentionally resembles Narnia complete with siblings going through furniture to a strange land ruled by giant, god-like animals (a Ram named Ember rather than a lion named Aslan). This is important because Fillory plays a central role in the last part of the novel which I will not go into so as to avoid spoilers. I will just say that the last third of the novel becomes a fairly typical fantasy adventure in structure, but whose execution is in keeping with the tone and style of the rest of the story. In other words, Fillory is NOT YOUR PARENTS NARNIA. As with the first two thirds of the book, I found this to be well written and compelling.

Overall, I can not recommend this book highly enough. I thought the writing was superb, the characters were three dimensional and very well developed and the world-building was amazing, especially in regards to how the fantastic was made to seem so real. HIGHEST POSSIBLE RECOMMENDATION!!! ...more

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Oct 01, 2015 Raeleen Lemay marked it as dnf

Shelves: adult-fiction

I tried. I really tried.

Aside from enjoying the beginning, reading this book is like staring at a piece of cardboard for hours on end. It's just verryyyyyy dull to me and I don't care about it one bit. I may give it another chance someday, but no promises.

However, I do want to give the tv series a shot, because I really didn't hate the characters or the world, I just can't get into the way they were written in this book.

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Mar 07, 2017 Mary ~Ravager of Tomes~ rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: year-2017, audiobook, 4-star

What would you do if tomorrow your Hogwarts letter came in the mail? What about if your closet became a portal to Narnia?

Suddenly there is a sharp line in the sand, dividing your life into two phases: Before Magic and After Magic.

The Magicians analyzes this concept with the very deepest, darkest pits of human sin in mind. It is an exploration of realistic responses to unrealistic circumstances.

"I got my heart's desire...and there my troubles began."

This is not a book for people who prefer their ...more

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Feb 02, 2016 Lola rated it did not like it

Shelves: did-not-finish, fantasy

I think I'll just stick with the TV series, because this is terrible.

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Aug 15, 2009 Cindy rated it it was ok

Shelves: fantasy, read-in-2009

Okay I am in the minority I didn't really like this book. I didn't think it was going to be a Harry Potter, as a matter of fact I knew it wouldn't be even though it was compared to HP.... the author even compared it to HP which its not.

I can enjoy that this is a "tribute" to fantasy..... but that's about it. It was a depressing poorly written book. Details seemed to be lacking and the only details we'd get is a knock off version of another fantasy book. The characters were one sided and had no ...more

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Jan 17, 2015 Stepheny rated it did not like it · review of another edition

Shelves: gouge-out-my-eyes-with-a-spoon

Prepare yourselves for a rant-filled scathing review. So. Much. Hate.

When I read the Martian I really never thought there would be a book I would hate more. But boy am I putting my foot in my mouth on that one! The Magicians was the winner by a landslide for The Most Obnoxious Book of the Year Award!

Congratulations, Lev Grossman! Your book fucking sucks.

This book was said to be the “adult version of Harry Potter.” Those are some big balls you have making that claim. Especially to someone lik ...more

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Jan 13, 2011 [Name Redacted] rated it it was ok

Shelves: urban-fantasy, philosophy, magic, fantasy, dark-fantasy, misery-porn, tripe

A friend gave this book to me as a Christmas present, but the sneering reviews (on and inside the book) which compared it (oh-so-favorably) to Harry Potter/Narnia/LotR (proclaiming them "weak" and this strong and bracing and refreshing and...) kept repulsing me before I could even get to the first page. She's coming to visit me next month however and I'm determined to read it! Updates to follow!

UPDATE 4: A miserable book about miserable people being miserable while doing miserable things written A friend gave this book to me as a Christmas present, but the sneering reviews (on and inside the book) which compared it (oh-so-favorably) to Harry Potter/Narnia/LotR (proclaiming them "weak" and this strong and bracing and refreshing and...) kept repulsing me before I could even get to the first page. She's coming to visit me next month however and I'm determined to read it! Updates to follow!

UPDATE 4: A miserable book about miserable people being miserable while doing miserable things written by, I suspect, a very miserable man. I was also disappointed, but amused, to learn how much of the novel (especially the identity of the "big bad" and the fate of an oft-mentioned ancillary character) I was able to predict ahead of time, and the dialogue in the final great confrontation felt absurdly hackneyed -- especially coming from an author desperately trying to establish a narrative and style contrary to the genre he's trying to satirize/criticize/mock. You know whose story would have been far more interesting and engaging and subversive? MARTIN CHATWIN. You know whose story was a tiresome exercise in sneering banality? QUENTIN COLDWATER.

UPDATE 3: This is a quick, easy read -- i think that has a lot to do with Grossman's "tell-don't-show" approach to writing, and the psuedo-serialized format. The characters are pretty flat, just broad generalizations (fat guy, uptight girl, mopey protagonist, smart love-interest, mohawk guy, Russian teacher, hot young teacher, etc.) and the dialog actually feels LESS realistic and MORE awkward for all the modern-day slang and profanity that's shoehorned in. The sex scenes are vague descriptions, and for that I have to admire Grossman's restraint -- after all, he's trying very hard to write for "adults".

UPDATE 2: I think I've finally realized what this actually reminds me of. It's like a pale imitation of the graphic novel mini-series The Books of Magic by Neil Gaiman (and its subsequent, lesser follow-up serieses "The Books of Magic", "The Names of Magic" and "The Age of Magic".) It seems to draw a lot from "The Books of Magic" actually, complete with an immature (emotionally, psychologically, intellectually and physically) wizard slowly using his power to indulge his every base instinct and whim and losing touch with humanity. Sadly, there's no great sense of loss here, only a slow realization that the protagonist is as tiresome at the end as he was at the beginning.

UPDATE 1: I found this line from a GoodReads review of the book and it seems to sum up what I'm feeling and what most non-hipsters felt about it: "This is a cold and sterile book for people who think themselves too sophisticated for genre fiction, a sub-section of the reading public that, I suspect, includes the author." Grossman is a "teller" not a "shower" and as a result he's really not much of a writer. The only parts I've actually found compelling have been the brief descriptions of the natural world in Upstate New York, and that's only because I grew up there and remember the place quite clearly; I am substituting my memories for the artistry Grossman lacks. So far every character has been unpleasant and unsympathetic, no-one is really happy or even capable of feeling content, and magic is empty and apparently incapable of anything truly special. How very much like every "profound" novel written these days! Maybe this will appeal more to fans of Jonathan Franzen and Michael Chabon? It will certainly appeal to those readers who mistake misery and depression and nihilism for depth and insight and realism. Is the message that magic cannot make you happy, because it is merely a tool and as such simply reflects the inner character of the user? That could have been conveyed without hitting the reader quite so hard over the head with how utterly miserable everyone and everything is. Part of the problem with "The Magicians" is that the author clearly sees the subject matter as far beneath him, like the "Fillory" books which Quentin loves but others dismiss as childish and through which Grossman conveys his utter contempt for Lewis, Tolkien, Rowling, etc. and their fans; it is as though Grossman and his hipster readers are outside looking in and sharing smirking, adolescent jibes directed at the people having genuine fun inside. After all, they're too COOL to join the party. I hope things improve, but it's not much hope. ...more

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May 24, 2009 Kemper rated it really liked it

Shelves: fantasy, magic, 2011-r

A quick and easy way to describe this would be to call it Harry Potter for adults. There's a magic school and a lot more sex and booze than poor old Harry ever had. But that doesn't do it justice because this was an extremely original and unique twist on the notion of what it would be like to actually live in a world where magic and fantasy realms exist.

Quentin Coldwater is a bored teenager getting ready to apply for college but is already seriously disillusioned with his life and wishes things A quick and easy way to describe this would be to call it Harry Potter for adults. There's a magic school and a lot more sex and booze than poor old Harry ever had. But that doesn't do it justice because this was an extremely original and unique twist on the notion of what it would be like to actually live in a world where magic and fantasy realms exist.

Quentin Coldwater is a bored teenager getting ready to apply for college but is already seriously disillusioned with his life and wishes things were more like his favorite fantasy novels set in a land called Fillory, which is essentially the author's stand-in for Narnia. However, Quentin quickly learns that he's got magical talent, and he's suddenly attending a training academy called Brakebills.

Quentin is the kind of guy who after finding out he won a huge lottery would instantly start bitching about how bad the taxes will be. Even though he's always longed for a world closer to his Filory novels, he never sees the adventure he's living by learning magic and all the things that go into his training. Learning magic and even falling in love don't make him happy, and he holds onto the childish idea that there's some 'next place' that will finally make him complete.

To make matters worse, once he and his friends graduate, they learn that there's no real need for magic since there are no big magical threats so they use their talents to live fat and easy while partying too much and trying to entertain themselves. Until an old classmate appears with the news that Filory is real.

There's three big things at work in this book. The idea that magic is real, and the author put a great deal of effort into developing the idea of magic in the real world with specific rules. The second is that the idea of journeying to a magical land on some kind of quest would be a fun adventure is actually pretty naive when you consider how actually bloody and insane the kind of things described would be. (Think about what it would REALLY be like to have some kind of half-human/half-beast run at you with a sword.) The third (and most interesting) is that a young man with a world of possibilities in front of him would find himself disappointed with life because it isn't like an adventure story and his stubborn refusal to realize that life will never be like a fantasy novel even if he eventually makes it to an actual fantasy world.

Fast-paced, funny, sometimes tragic and always entertaining, this was a book that I really enjoyed for it's offbeat way of looking at magic and fantasy stories. ...more

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May 17, 2016 J.L. Sutton rated it liked it

This was a difficult review to write. I was immediately drawn into Lev Grossman’s The Magicians, but then spent most of the remainder of the book wondering why I was reading it. The several parts of the book had a schizophrenic quality which didn’t always seem to have much to do with preceding sections or what came after. Still, it was well-written and I appreciated Grossman’s depiction of the magical world as something other than a place of awe and wonder. His rich, spoiled mages help create so ...more

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May 14, 2017 Fabian rated it it was ok

Terrifically horrible, gonorrheal mess--overly lauded by megastar writers because, as book critic for TIME, Grossman has been pivotal to an extent for some of their fame & $. Obvi.

Alas, one reads it and knows right around page 300 what a swamp the rest of the voyage will be, as superduper 2D Harry-Hermione-Ron-Luna-&co. avatars (at a discount) find themselves, I fuck with you NOT, in a fish out of water but lame trip to the land of Narnia. A generic one, as well. It really is just those ...more

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Jun 15, 2011 Stefan rated it it was amazing

Shelves: fantasy, library-loan, far-beyond-reality-review

The Magicians by Lev Grossman is one of the most frequently reviewed fantasy novels of the last few years, which isn’t surprising because the author is a well known writer (and book reviewer) for TIME Magazine, and the book was very effectively hyped as “Harry Potter with college age students.” The end result of all of this is that lots of people who don’t regularly read fantasy have picked up this novel, and many of them had their expectations severely challenged. So, is The Magicians also wort ...more

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Dec 13, 2010 Maciek rated it did not like it · review of another edition

Shelves: fantasy, coming-of-age, read-in-2010, reviewed

Having never heard of Lev Grossman I picked up two of his novels at the thrift store, basing solely on the premises from the back covers - Codex and The Magicians. I decided to read The Magicians first, because Grossman's first two books have both been bombs - Warp vanished without a trace, and Codex received largely negative reviews. But The Magicians was a huge success, so it couldn't be all that bad, right? After my admiration for Peter Straub's Shadowland (which deals with roughly the same t ...more

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Mar 13, 2017 Jack +Books & Bourbon+ rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Quick...raise your hand if can answer yes to the following questions;

Have you ever read a book and wished you could visit (or just permanently relocate) to the place/timeframe in question?

Or, more importantly, do you feel out of place in this world of celebrity worship, rampant consumerism, confusing national conflicts, and the death of common sense?

Is your hand raised? Yeah, mine is too.

Glad we are all in the same boat. But, is it any surprise that we are all of similar mind? We are all here ...more

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Apr 01, 2013 Darth J rated it really liked it

Shelves: series, witch-wizard, would-recommend

September 2015 Update

It occurs to me that I never really wrote a proper review for this, so no time like the present, amirite? We start with millennial Quentin Coldwater

who gets accepted to ~~New York Hogwarts~~ Brakebills College for Magical Pedagogy

after passing some exhausting magical tests.

Upon graduating he realizes that magic can't solve everything

but it can do a lot of other cool stuff

like go to ~~Narnia~~ Fillory, a magical land from his favorite childhood book series and play ~~quidditch~~ welters. ...more

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Nov 27, 2012 Samantha rated it it was ok

2.5 stars

This isn't to say I don't think this is a good book. I think it's very clever. It messes with your expectations, about everything, and because of that there were many parts I didn't actively enjoy. (I would say that I passively enjoyed it... Is that a thing?) Because of that it gets a lower rating. I do feel that this is the kind of book that can't be rated individually and instead the series should be reviewed as a whole. I will continue with this series and I'm looking forward to it. ...more

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Nenia ✨ Queen of Literary Trash, Protector of Out-of-Print Gems, Khaleesi of Bodice Rippers, Mother of Smut, the Unrepentant, Breaker of Convention ✨ Campbell

May 07, 2018 Nenia ✨ Queen of Literary Trash, Protector of Out-of-Print Gems, Khaleesi of Bodice Rippers, Mother of Smut, the Unrepentant, Breaker of Convention ✨ Campbell rated it did not like it

Shelves: fantasy, you-can-watch-it-on-the-telly, harder-to-get-thru-than-labyrinth

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DNF @ 36%

Mastubatory fantasy for the disaffected intellectual who thinks Harry Potter needs less friendship and more Ayn Rand and Bret Easton Ellis. If the idea of reading about a bunch of self-congratulatory little assholes learning magic appeals to you, then by all means, pick up THE MAGICIANS.

I should point out that my qualm itself is less about the characters and more about the stilted writing and the lazy portrayal in which they are f ...more

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Jun 21, 2013 seak rated it really liked it

Shelves: audio, 2013, urban-fantasy

This book was the worst book to read/listen to while I was extremely busy. All I wanted to do was get back in the car, take a walk, workout (yeah right), clean, etc. Anything to get back to my audiobook.

The best sign of a good audiobook is how much I put aside my visualbook to listen.

And the craziest part is that when I start to explain the book, I find myself wondering, How could I possibly like this book?

The main characters are the biggest, self-obsessed, pricks I've probably ever read about. ...more

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The Bookworm Chal...: The Magicians	4	15	May 06, 2018 10:07AM
Accountant Backli...: Discussion for the first half of Book One of The Magicians (chs 1-7)	8	14	Apr 25, 2018 10:56AM
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About Lev Grossman

Lev Grossman

6,858 followers

My novel The Magicians was a New York Times bestseller. So was the sequel, The Magician King. The third book in the trilogy, The Magician's Land, will be published in August 2014.

There's yet more information about me and my books on my website.