The Magicians (The Magicians, #1)

by Lev Grossman

Quentin Coldwater's life is changed forever by an apparently chance encounter: when he turns up for his entrance interview to Princeton he finds his interviewer dead - but a strange envelope bearing Quentin's name leads him down a very different path to any he'd ever imagined. The envelope, and the mysterious manuscript it contains, leads to a secret world of obsession and privilege, a world of freedom and power and, for a while, it's a world that seems to answer all Quentin's desires. But the idyll cannot last - and when it's finally shattered, Quentin is drawn into something darker and far more dangerous than anything he could ever have expected...

• ISBN10: 1101082283
• ISBN13: 9781101082287
• Publish Date: 11 August 2009 (first published 21 May 2009)
• Publish Status: Active
• Imprint: Plume Books
• Format: eBook
• Language: English

Reviews

[pamela]

While I enjoyed the majority of The Magicians I hate to admit, this is one of the rare times that I will say that the television adaptation is vastly superior to the novel. While it had fun moments, I found myself forcing myself coming back to this book to finish it. I love the concept, and the fact that it's a different spin on the whole secret kingdom/magic school trope, but I genuinely think that the show did a better job of creating unforgettable and brilliant characters. The book characters are all just a little...annoying. Still, the show couldn't have created those characters and its world without Lev Grossman's blueprint, so I'm glad it exists, if only for that.

[Kelsey D]

Very different from the TV show, which I also immensely enjoy. Wish there was more in Fillory though -

[jeannamichel]

I wanted to love this one; I really did. And I’m still going to try out the TV show and read the sequel. However, The Magicians just wasn’t for me. The story revolves around Quentin who is a bit uninteresting and lethargic. I was waiting for the moment the characters and I would be excited about this hidden magic boarding school and that moment never came.

[Amber (The Literary Phoenix)]

Imagine a world where anyone can perform magic, if they work hard enough and are smart enough.  Magic is one of the world's best kept secrets, but it runs in the veins of every influential organization worldwide.  This is the world of The Magicians, where only the best of the best are recruited to Breakbills.  But what to do after that?

The Magicians is a great adventure in fantasy and magical realism.  Most people are familiar with the popular Syfy show, but the book is deep and deliberate and fantastic.  There are similarities, and there are changes, but I don't want to talk about the show.  Just the book.

Lev Grossman's writing style is incredible.  His writing is very deep and detailed.  Most books I find I can read quickly, lightly - I had to absorb every syllable of The Magicians.  The carefully crafted world is a mix of imagination and science.  It's so close, I almost feel like I could touch it.  That is the most incredible type of world-building - the sort where you feel like you can reach out and move aside an invisible curtain and behind it is magic.  I am hooked.

That said, The Magicians is never a story about a handful of kids saving the world.  Quentin, Josh, Janet, Eliot, and Alice are not shiny people.  They are selfish and manipulative and pretty much just a holy mess.  I liked that the characters were not entirely likable.  I latched right on to Eliot - he seems like the character with the most room to grow.  It's easy to like the characters but not approve of them.

The books is broken into two halves - Breakbills and Filory.  They're both interesting in their own way.  I've heard people compare The Magicians to the Harry Potter series, but I think that Filory has definite edges of Narnia.  It's refreshing to have a new adult story with the same magical feel as the middle grade novels I loved growing up.

And yes.  The Magicians advertises as an adult novel, but the characters are college students and it feels more new adult to me.

I wasn't a fan of the show and had no intention to read the book before it was given to me as a gift.  I'm glad I did read it - I absolutely enjoyed it.

[cornerfolds]

Read more of my reviews at Cornerfolds.com!

The Magicians has been on my audiobook wishlist for years. It's one of those books I knew I would never get around to actually reading if I didn't find a copy to listen to, but I also had to wait until I was in just the right mood for an adult fantasy novel. When I saw the TV show pop up on Netflix, I figured it was finally time to give it a try! I went into it with the knowledge that it wasn't young adult, but also a little confused because a lot of people seem to think it is. I went in slightly confused about the target audience, but with a totally open mind, having not even read the synopsis.

Quentin is the main character of this book and he is by no means a perfect one or necessarily easy to love. The story begins with Quentin as a gifted student in high school and progresses through college and beyond. He starts out as a slightly snotty kid and does learn a little humility on his journey, but I can see why people would have a hard time sympathizing with him. He is a character with a lot of personality flaws - he has a huge ego and he's selfish. That isn't to say he wasn't a fun character though! I never felt like I could really put myself into Quentin's shoes (I'm not the best at everything, let's be honest.) but I did have a great time following his story.

There is a whole cast of characters in this story, but one of the more important ones is Alice. Alice, Quentin's main love interest, is much, much easier to love than Quentin himself. I found myself identifying and sympathizing with her throughout the book and really felt that, although Quentin was the main focus, Alice really brought the story to life. Various other characters make up Quentin's main social network and I loved each of them for different reasons! Usually it's difficult for me to keep up with so many characters at once, but each was distinct and important.

Not surprisingly, the story is all about the magical world - think Harry Potter for American college kids. There's sex, alcohol and drugs. This is in no way a young adult book, in case anyone had any doubt! This story is intricate, sometimes very dark, and spans several years, and I loved most of it. There were moments when I wished we could skip ahead past some of the more monotonous scenes of college kids living together, but it was all at least kind of relevant in hindsight. Some of the book was slow and occasionally I wondered where things were going, but the magical world outweighed that for me. A comparison can be made between The Magicians and Harry Potter, but this story is truly unique and the similarities end at a magical school setting for part of the book.

The world of The Magicians is truly magical in a way that seemed completely believable. Unlike magical worlds in other books that require a huge suspension of disbelief, the way magic was seamlessly interwoven with the real world made it especially impressive. I think part of it might have been the way that Quentin so easily accepted it, having been raised on stories of magical lands similar to Narnia.

I don't want to give up much about this story because experiencing it for myself knowing very little about it was fantastic! Overall, I really enjoyed The Magicians. I do think it would have wider appeal if Quentin was a slightly more sympathetic character and that the story seemed to meander at times, but I ended the book having enjoyed the journey and eager to read the next book! I would highly recommend this to readers of adult fantasy, but definitely avoid it if you're expecting a young adult read.

[Sam@WLABB]

Rating: 3.5 Stars

A school where you major in magic? Count me in. There are a lot of cool magical things about this story, and also a lot of human issues to reflect upon. Quentin's journey is not a happy one. It's a cycle of him striving for something, and then once he has it, thinking it's not enough. There was quite a few times that I wanted to just give him a smack.



I do think that this journey was necessary in order for him to recognize the good things he had in his life. I would definitely classify this as a coming of age story, because in the end, Quentin has grown and changed and maybe even become a better person.

Overall: magically entertaining with good world building, but a slightly frustrating MC.

[inlibrisveritas]

The Magicians is a book that once finished I was more than happy to literally toss it across the room with the hopes that it would land in the dog's water dish...seriously, I actually tried. It missed, so it go to go back on my store shelf, but the matter still stands. I tried to drown a book on purpose. While the overall plot has promise, the execution of it left a lot to be desired...in fact it basically made me desire an entirely different novel all together.

The story starts off full of mystery and with questions and it holds on to that for around three to four chapters before it stalled out and started wallowing in self pity. We don't get a ton of back story or world building when it comes to the school, but we do get some "great" descriptions of how utterly boring and tedious the class work is...because magic as it turns out is basically nothing but theory and textbooks. Wow...that sounds awesome. It's not that I don't like the idea of magic being hard, it's actually a really nice change of pace, it's the fact that no matter what Quentin and the others just spin their wheels over how utterly mundane it all is. They make it worse for themselves, and for me. Because if they don't give a crap, why should I? The actual schooling goes by incredibly fast in this, and then we spend another full section stalled out with more wallowing and bad life decisions, before we get to the answers to the questions posed in the first four chapters...I don't know what pisses me off more, the fact that nothing interesting happens for like 200 ages of the book or the fact that I could have skipped the entire middle section and still 'gotten' what was going on. That whole Fillory thing? Yeah...don't go into this expecting that to pop up a lot until towards the last third.
Now I will say I do understand the whole point of making the focus on Quentin and his struggles with depression, it's like a case study of how depression can basically make anything awesome seem really bleak and tedious. I actually liked that his depression wasn't magically cured by...well magic, like people suggested. But damn...depression doesn't make a person completely unlikable, grumpy and at times too tired to care? Yeah, of course...but depression doesn't give anyone a pass on being an asshole ALL THE TIME. And that's basically what the entire group of friends were, assholes. It's hard to get into a book where the characters are constantly staring at walls with alcohol glazed eyes, waiting for life to get exciting. YOU HAVE MAGIC YOU TWIT!

I'm going to say that The Magicians is a love it or leave it novel. You'll either find it enjoyable with some really great topics highlighted and pretty cool ideas (though definitely used in Narnia and HP)...or you'll be bored and frustrated. I can't say I'll be continuing this series any time in the future

[Artemis]

Reviews at The Artemis Reader

I have been trying to write this review since I finished the book in early April. The Magicians is peddled as an “adult Harry Potter” and in some respects it is but in a lot of ways this title is false. Ultimately the world built by J.K. Rowling is far superior (in detail, understanding, and general incorporation into the plot of the Potter series) to Grossman’s Magicians. I’m feeling unusually generous by giving this first installment three stars.

I had a lot of problems with the way information was presented in this novel. I never understood the nuts and bolts of how things operated at Brakebills and in Fillory. Grossman seemed not to be bothered by intricate details (I mean a student died in the 3rd year and he just bypasses it with a paragraph! Nothing about how the students and staff dealt with that or an investigation into what happened was ever mentioned) of specific events. He glosses over so much that I felt like I had skimmed large sections offering (any kind of) explanation when really he was the one who skimmed over the facts.
While I tried not to compare The Magicians to the Harry Potter series, because it became apparently clear that the two were not even remotely related, I ended up doing just that in my post-reading haze. Rowling developed an intricate world with rules and regulations, governing organizations and a societal structure that could easily be translated throughout the series. In comparison, Grossman almost leaves us perched on a cliff, expecting readers to catapult themselves to the other side without help or understanding.

Overall, I found this first installment okay. It was interesting, but I ended up feeling like I was missing large chunks of information. I also found Quentin and his cohorts extremely annoying most of the time. The Quentin/Alice relationship felt like such a cop out for both of these characters. Their relationship was never translatable to me (they get turned into arctic foxes, have sex, and then they are in love? What??). Never once did it seem like they developed a legitimate relationship in the 400 page book. I felt like all of the characters were a third of the way finished. They all had potential to be a little, more than they appeared. I guess my biggest problem with this book was the limited feel of characters, places, and overall plot arc for the trilogy.

Three stars for a hopefully better second installment.

[adamfortuna]

With the new SyFy Magicians series airing, and a number of people recommending this series, I decided to give it a shot. While expecting a more campy Harry Potter adaptation, what I got was a present day magical tale -- a combination of HP, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and Apocalypse Now. In a book that could've gone very campy, it managed to stay serious. I'm looking forward to seeing where the story goes next.

[lisacee]

This world doesn't feel good. Or happy. Why would I want magic if it doesn't make me feel those things?