The Magicians by Lev Grossman

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...

Reviewed by inlibrisveritas on

2 of 5 stars

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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

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Reading updates

  • Started reading
  • 23 April, 2016: Finished reading
  • 23 April, 2016: Reviewed