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The Magicians (The Magicians, #1)

Lev Grossman

Start date: March 2, 2013

Finish date: March 31, 2013

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Sep 03, 2009 Joyce rated it liked it

Imagine if Harry Potter and his friends had grown up in New York City and were imbued with the edgy, superior attitude common among bankers who thought they still deserved multimillion dollar bonuses after wrecking this country’s economy and you’ve got a picture of the main characters in “The Magicians,” by Lev Grossman.

Quentin Coldwater is on his way to an interview for Princeton with friends James and Julia, who are a couple. This makes Quentin the third wheel, best friends with James and in l Imagine if Harry Potter and his friends had grown up in New York City and were imbued with the edgy, superior attitude common among bankers who thought they still deserved multimillion dollar bonuses after wrecking this country’s economy and you’ve got a picture of the main characters in “The Magicians,” by Lev Grossman.

Quentin Coldwater is on his way to an interview for Princeton with friends James and Julia, who are a couple. This makes Quentin the third wheel, best friends with James and in love with Julia.

While bemoaning the fact he never quite fits in, they arrive at the address of the interviewer only to discover that he is dead. After the paramedics finish with the body, one of them tells the students that two envelopes were left for them. Quentin takes his envelope, finds it contains a notebook and a slip of paper that blows into a wooded lot.

Following the strip of paper leads him to this novel’s equivalent of Hogwarts. It’s called Brakebills College. The first half of the book follows Quentin and the friends he makes through college. Magic is not the simple flick of the wand activity we’ve come to expect, it’s very hard work. Quentin is very good at it but still not happy. He’s never happy.

While the first half of the book has some parallels to J.K. Rowlings’ famous series, the second half strays into C.S. Lewis territory. It appears Quentin and all of his friends grew up on a series of books about a magical place called Fillory where the Chatwin children went on quests in which they worked with talking animals.

After graduating from college, Quentin and his friends move to New York and find life a mostly meaningless quest to get high or drugs and alcohol until one of them finds a way to get to Fillory. The quest changes their lives but still fails to satisfy Quentin.

Really, after awhile you just want to slap Quentin upside the head and tell him to get over himself.

And that’s the main problem with the book. The story pulls itself together pretty well and goes in some interesting directions. The author convinces the reader that magic is both hard and dangerous. Spells that go wrong can kill the spellcaster. It’s tricky stuff that not everyone can do.

But the characters are not interesting. They don’t have much of a backstory and they don’t do much except drink to excess and have sex. They’re boring and boorish and the reader will be hard pressed to care about what happens to any of them. ...more

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