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...
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.
