The Magicians (The Magicians, #1) in The Alternative Worlds

Aug 12, 2009 Kara Babcock rated it liked it

Shelves: 2010-read, fantasy, owned

If you write enough book reviews, eventually you start sounding like everyone you never wanted to be. Today, I'll be the annoying guy who brags about how he saw everything coming. That's right, I found this book utterly predictable from start to finish. Even the Arctic fox sex scene.

The Magicians is a very postmodern type of fantasy, deconstructing as it does the Narnian-style childhood fantasy of saving the world. It's one of those curiously self-aware books that nevertheless stays firmly on th ...more

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Apr 22, 2010 mark monday rated it liked it

Shelves: come-of-age, secret-histories, fantasy-modern

it is clear that the author is trying for Harry Potter-meets-Narnia through the lens of Bret Easton Ellis. nice try! but all the carefully placed bits of minor note ennui and teenage boredom cannot hide the fact that the author actually has a lot invested in writing pure, thrilling fantasy with a healthy dose of phantasmagoria. i will take the moments of awe over the moments of bored disdain any day... and i think the author secretly agrees. Grossman's description of a transformative flight (heh ...more

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Dec 22, 2010 Kevin Xu rated it it was ok

Shelves: re-read

I feel like this book has too many tropes and cliche of all the mainstream fantasy books all wrapped up in one. I hope maybe the sequel will be better. Overall, the book was not worth the time to read it. First, the author comes from this high New York mind set that only New Yorkers are better than others, even better, add both Harvard and Yale into the mix. (one of the reason the New York Times and the media love this book) To me what I hate most about this book is that he had to copy from Harr ...more

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Jul 14, 2011 Danielle The Book Huntress rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: winter-cold-setting, antihero, favorites, audiobook, fantasy, metafiction, unsympathetic-main-characters, all-things-summer-challenge, the-chosen-one, laughed-myself-silly-while-reading

Did you ever read a book, and enjoy it, where you weren't even sure you really liked the main characters at all? They are people that you wouldn't want to be around for more than five minutes in real life. Well that is this book.

Having said that, this was a really good book. I found it fascinating, wildly hilarious, creative, unique, and I have this fond feeling inside now that I've finish it. But along with that, there is a sadness.

Let's talk about this book!

The Characters:

As I said above, I sp ...more

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Aug 13, 2009 Sarah rated it really liked it

Shelves: speculative-fiction

I expected The Magicians to be some sort of arch metacommentary on the genre from which it draws its inspiration, like the author's brother's Soon I Will Be Invincible. I actually didn't expect to like it, which made it a pleasant surprise, well written and well plotted. The capsule review I had seen called it an adult spin on Harry Potter; that's sort of true. It involves a school of magic and a bunch of teenagers, but it exists in our world, where Harry Potter has been written, and the charact ...more

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Sep 01, 2009 Wealhtheow rated it liked it

Shelves: fantasy

A precocious and unhappy teen chases after a piece of note paper and ends up at the entrance exam for Brakebills College. Quentin makes it through and matriculates into an exclusive magical college he never knew existed. His time at college is my favorite part of the book--the descriptions of finger exercises and relentless memorization and meditation are excellently done. Grossman really gets the mindset of overachieving perfectionists. Eventually, Quentin and his friends graduate and live live ...more

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Feb 04, 2010 Sandi rated it it was ok

Shelves: fantasy, 2010, library-books-read

There is no way to review The Magicians by Lev Grossman without comparing it to the Harry Potter series. The book itself makes reference to the uber-successful Rowling opus several times, so you know what it's striving for. The Magicians is about a young man named Quentin Coldwater who finds himself attending a college for magicians in upstate New York. Because they're college students, they get to drink and have sex. All of the students at Brakesbill College seem to be mentally gifted and emoti ...more

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Oct 14, 2010 Brad rated it did not like it · review of another edition

Shelves: read-in-2016, hopes-dashed-like-an-egg-on-cement, audio-book, fantasy-urban-fantasy

I despise Quentin Coldwater, but I am pretty sure that's not why I dislike this book. Unsavoury or downright unlikable protagonists are rarely a problem for me, and sometimes I can love a book just because they are so unsympathetic.

Quentin is judgemental, weak, whiny, entitled, lazy, mean, superior, selfish, self-absorbed, indecisive, and a whole lot more that I can't call to mind at the moment. He is not a nice boy. He is, and perhaps intentionally so, a difficult character to feel anything po I despise Quentin Coldwater, but I am pretty sure that's not why I dislike this book. Unsavoury or downright unlikable protagonists are rarely a problem for me, and sometimes I can love a book just because they are so unsympathetic.

Quentin is judgemental, weak, whiny, entitled, lazy, mean, superior, selfish, self-absorbed, indecisive, and a whole lot more that I can't call to mind at the moment. He is not a nice boy. He is, and perhaps intentionally so, a difficult character to feel anything positive for, yet he never does anything to deserve the abuse he takes at the hands of his lover/ex-girlfriend, Alice.

I've seen worse scenes of abuse in all sorts of places, and far more graphically disturbing scenes, but all those scenes I am thinking of had the distinction of being framed as abusive and/or disturbing. Quentin's beating at the hands of Alice, however, is particularly sickening because we are told that Quentin deserves what he gets.

What does he get? Well, he gets sucker punched by Alice who is holding a magical button, which works a bit like a roll of quarters in her fist, and Quentin's eye takes a serious lashing, so much so that his "orbital socket" is seriously traumatized, then Alice goes on to smack him about for a while despite his attempts to get her to stop attacking and talk; the only talking she is willing to do is to belittle him throughout his beating, focusing on his character flaws and destroying him emotionally rather than focusing on his betrayal until she finally threatens to murder him with her superior magic.

Throughout this assault, Quentin takes full responsibility for his beating (because he had a threesome outside his relationship with Alice), accepts that he is to blame for hurting her and is deserving of her abuse (because he inexcusably had a threesome with some close friends when his girlfriend, not his fiance nor his spouse, shut him out emotionally for weeks), and he never once questions what Alice has done to him.

As the story progresses, Quentin continues to grovel at the feet of his abuser, seeking to make amends for his "betrayal" while fully "understanding" why he deserves the abuse. But what is worse is the reaction of his friends to the abuse -- especially the other members of his threesome. He is consistently mocked and teased for his physical "weakness," no one bothers to care or worry about his emotional and physical wounds, and he is victim blamed in the worst possible ways.

As a longtime victim of abuse, albeit from a parent rather than a partner, this entire section of The Magicians marred everything that came before and everything that followed. It also made me insanely uncomfortable, depressing the hell out of me on multiple levels. I have never used this word before in connection with myself, but I can honestly say I was triggered by the abuse of Quentin.

So now I am back to my beginning: I hated Quentin from the first moments of the book. That never changed. And he wasn't a good guy in any way. Should he have cheated? Maybe not, but as with most acts of adultery it wasn't one sided (in this case there were four sides). What I do know, however, is that nothing Quentin was and nothing Quentin did can justify Alice's abuse, the shame that made him accept blame for his own abuse or the responses of the others in his life.

I am not happy. ...more

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Aug 15, 2011 Terry rated it really liked it

Shelves: fantasy

I really enjoyed reading The Magicians. That's not surprising given that I think I'm more or less Lev Grossman's target audience: thirty-something sci-fi and fantasy nerds that take the genre fairly seriously, but still like to have fun and geek out at casual references to our favourite genre classics. This book has been compared to a cross between Harry Potter and the Narnia books, and I don't think the comparison is unfair...Grossman was obviously heavily influenced by these books and he wears I really enjoyed reading The Magicians. That's not surprising given that I think I'm more or less Lev Grossman's target audience: thirty-something sci-fi and fantasy nerds that take the genre fairly seriously, but still like to have fun and geek out at casual references to our favourite genre classics. This book has been compared to a cross between Harry Potter and the Narnia books, and I don't think the comparison is unfair...Grossman was obviously heavily influenced by these books and he wears his influences on his sleeve. Add to that list Donna Tartt's _The Secret History_ and a healthy smattering of D&D and I think you more or less have the pedigree for this book. That's not to say that Grossman is merely slavishly lifting from his favourites in some fan-fiction style work of pastiche. I think Grossman is successful in moving beyond these obvious influences and creating something of his own.

The outlines of the story are probably well-know given the relative hype that surrounded the book: Quentin Coldwater is a fairly typical disaffected nerd on the cusp of high school graduation, morosely wondering what to do with the rest of his life. Fortuitously he is plucked from the clutches of an interview with Princeton and winds up attending a secret college for Magicians to which only the brightest and best are invited. From here we follow him through the typical growing pains of a coming-of-age tale, spiced with the added complications of magic.

There's a lot of hate here on Goodreads for the book and most of it seems to fall into two major categories: 1) Wow, these characters are all sad and depressing, not at all like good old Harry Potter and his saccharine friends, and 2) Wow, Grossman totally stole the idea of a school for magic users from J.K. Rowling...how dare he?! I will readily admit that Quentin and his friends are not exactly happy-shiny people, but I didn't notice that they were horribly exaggerated either. They certainly seemed a lot more like real people than some authors are able to pull off (no names mentioned here). Also, I think given both the kinds of people they are (A-type, driven overachievers) and the experiences they find themselves in (forced to accept at a relatively advanced age that the explanations for the entire world as they knew it are not exactly true), and handed vast opportunity for power make most of their actions believable. In addition, for all the flaws Quentin may exhibit he seems to be trying to overcome them in an attempt to become something better...that's the whole point of the story, really. As to the second objection, all I can say is that Rowling hardly invented the concept of a school of magic and that those that love the pot should not be worried by the fact that the kettle is black. I think Grossman is very above board about his influences and while the parallels are obvious I think that any accusations that this is simply Harry Potter with unsavoury characters and the serial numbers filed off are unfounded.

Fillory, his invented stand-in for Narnia, is also well done. I found it much more convincing, and generally interesting, that Narnia ever was for me. Grossman even got me to consider starting to read the Narnia books where I left them, and that is no small feat given that, while I respect C. S. Lewis greatly and love some of his writing, the Narnia series just left me cold...I guess I came to them too late. The book left me wishing for more, and since the sequel has just been released that's a good thing. ...more

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Mar 06, 2010 Nicky rated it liked it

Shelves: fantasy

I do not know how I really feel about this book. I dipped in and out of it, sometimes intrigued and sometimes indifferent, and finally read the last half in one go. There are a lot of things I like about it -- the realism, the bleakness, the emptiness that Quentin feels, the half-embarrassment about wanting to go to Fillory. Sometimes I liked the intertextuality, the references to series' like Narnia and Harry Potter; sometimes I wished it would try to be more of a story in its own right. Quenti ...more

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Dec 02, 2009 Jaylia3 rated it really liked it

2009 -- I started out liking this a lot, but as it went on I enjoyed it less and less. There is often an ennui and feeling of pointlessness in Quentin, main character, that seeps into the tone of the book. Even when he feels strongly about something the book just seems to drift around.

October 2014 After re-reading -- I gave this 2 stars after reading it originally, probably a little harsh, but then I loved the 2nd book so I came back to listen to this as an audiobook before moving onto the fina ...more

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Aug 21, 2009 This Is Not The Michael You're Looking For rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: fantasy, fiction

I was a bit disappointed in The Magicians, but that is partly due to having had high expectations (for reasons that are not clear to me). I love the concept behind this book: what if there really was a secret magic society, hidden behind the modern world, but in a "realistic" context, rather than the more fanciful one from Harry Potter. This concept ends up serving as the backdrop for the story Grossman wanted to tell, rather than being the story in-and-of itself. And perhaps that's where it los ...more

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Jun 01, 2010 Michelle rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: to-reread, fantasy, witches_wizards, wow-wtf

somewhere in upstate new york, there's a secret college for magicians that's most definitely not hogwarts. getting into it doesn't involve being whisked away by a felicitous note, but instead a day-long SAT/practical exam on nonsense ("The room was filled with a collective rustling of paper, like a flock of birds taking off. It was the motion of a bunch of high-powered type-A test killers getting down to their bloody work."), with a mind-wipe for those without passing grades. and once you get in ...more

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Jan 13, 2012 Suz rated it it was ok

Shelves: fantasy, book-club, award-winner, library

1. Ferrets are not rodents
2. This book bored the pee-water out of me.

So, I guess you can take it as a twisted (or more realistic?) coming of age story, which contrasts against a lot of the more twee stories that run amok in fantasy literature (most notably, of course, Harry Potter). Or you can take it as a silly novel that has tons and tons of shout-outs and allusions to other sci-fi and fantasy stuff (I did catch a fair amount of them, I know I missed a bunch), but in the end, this book bored t ...more

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Dec 13, 2012 Maree rated it liked it

Wow this was a long one. I'm not sure if it was just because I got it as an audio book and it took many, many car rides to complete or what. I probably would have been happy with the length if it wasn't so off or on. There were times when what was happening was completely compelling, and other times when I was thinking 'meh' and being bored.

The author of Game of Thrones says on the cover that this book is a shot of whiskey to Harry Potter's cup of weak tea. I can agree with that. There's sex, ad Wow this was a long one. I'm not sure if it was just because I got it as an audio book and it took many, many car rides to complete or what. I probably would have been happy with the length if it wasn't so off or on. There were times when what was happening was completely compelling, and other times when I was thinking 'meh' and being bored.

The author of Game of Thrones says on the cover that this book is a shot of whiskey to Harry Potter's cup of weak tea. I can agree with that. There's sex, adult situations, and alcoholic levels of drinking that HP would never touch. I can also see why Martin would love this book. It's got a plethora of characters and enough pages to fix a seriously wobbly table. But at least in this book, the characters are easy to follow.

I have to admit to being unsure why this book wasn't broken into more books. In HP, we get a book a year. This novel has the entirety of a magician's schooling on top of a lot of testing nonsense to get into the school, summer and winter vacations, and a long time of depression after graduation, followed by adventure and dead end jobs. But apparently there is a series after this as well, so maybe epics are just Grossman's style. But I wouldn't say he's a Rothfuss--the style just doesn't flow to where you get to the end and want more. I don't want to be relieved at the end of the book like I was at this one.

But like I said, there were sparks of genius in the stories. I truly enjoyed the young Alice and Quentin, before they become teenagers and messy. I appreciated the problems they faced as graduated wizards, because really, what would you do once you're thrust back into the real world but have such a serious magical advantage? The analogy applied by Alice's parents was interesting food for thought. And all the magical learning was interesting to hear about, to see the struggles in progress and see Grossman's ideas for enchantments.

I did end up being disappointed in Fillory. I guess I forgot to mention how seriously this book mirrors the Fillory books as Narnia in so many ways. I've read the entire Narnia series, and Grossman obviously has too in the way he's written Fillory to be exactly the same, but with maturity differences and whatever minor changes that are needed to perhaps keep away from copyright infringement (though maybe it was long enough ago it doesn't matter anymore?). I appreciated how the fighting was much more serious than they imagined, having gotten their impressions from a children's book, after all. And while it lost its magic of Quentin and the others, it also lost its magic for me, in that it did all seem like a pointless adventure.

Because really, how great would it be to learn that our favorite fantasy world really exists? That magic is real, and we're one of the chosen ones to learn it? I'm all for those hopeful thoughts, but Grossman moves beyond that in this book, saying that those discoveries don't last long enough to delight for a lifetime. It's a little depressing. ...more

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