The Magicians (The Magicians, #1)

by Lev Grossman

Like most people Quentin read the Fillory books in grade school. Unlike most people—unlike James and Julia—he never got over them.

but a book that did what books always promised to do and never actually quite did: get you out, really out, of where you were and into somewhere better.

He was used to this anticlimactic feeling, where by the time you’ve done all the work to get something you don’t even want it anymore. He had it all the time. It was one of the few things he could depend on.

Quentin had a powerful intuition that if he said no, all of this would be over before the syllable was even fully out of his mouth, and he would be left standing in the cold rain and dog shit of First Street wondering why he’d seemed to feel the warmth of the sun on the back of his neck for a second just then. He wasn’t ready for that. Not yet.

“The study of magic is not a science, it is not an art, and it is not a religion. Magic is a craft. When we do magic, we do not wish and we do not pray. We rely upon our will and our knowledge and our skill to make a specific change to the world.

Such a tender soul, he thought. But she’s the one I’ll have to beat.

He was worried that if he left Brakebills they’d never let him back in. He would never find his way back again—they would close the secret door to the garden behind him, and lock it, and its outline would be lost forever among the vines and the stonework, and he would be trapped out in the real world forever.

Things like this didn’t happen in Fillory: there was conflict, and even violence, but it was always heroic and ennobling, and anybody really good and important who bought it along the way came back to life at the end of the book.

“Oh, I think he wants to know about us,” Janet said. She took a bite of Eliot’s pear. “Yeah, nobody else went out but you two. What—you think we’re stupid?”

I think you’re magicians because you’re unhappy. A magician is strong because he feels pain. He feels the difference between what the world is and what he would make of it. Or what did you think that stuff in your chest was? A magician is strong because he hurts more than others. His wound is his strength.

I got my heart’s desire, he thought, and there my troubles began.

This was his life now, the life he had always been waiting for. It was finally here.

“Glory has its price,” Penny said. “Did you not know that, before you sought it?”

By merely speaking you could create damage and pain, cause tears to fall, drive people away, make yourself feel better, make your life worse.

And are you happy now? You found out, didn’t you? There’s no getting away from yourself. Not even in Fillory.”

Did you think you were the first one to face Martin in that room? Do you think that was even the first time you faced him? That battle has been fought again and again.

He could have eked out his sad wasted life with movies and books and masturbation and alcohol like everybody else. He would never have known the horror of really getting what he thought he wanted. He could have spared himself and everybody else the cost of it. If there was a moral to the story of Martin Chatwin, that was it in a nutshell. Sure, you can live out your dreams, but it’ll only turn you into a monster. Better to stay home and do card tricks in your bedroom instead.

Quentin put down his coffee. It had been a long time since he’d experienced any emotion at all other than sadness and shame and numbness, so long that for a moment he didn’t understand what was happening inside him. In spite of himself he felt sensation coming back to some part of him that he’d thought was dead forever. It hurt. But at the same time he wanted more of it.