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p_wong's review against another edition
adventurous
funny
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.25
mehsi's review against another edition
Done~ Finally done! And this book is the first to be granted the honour (well... honour...) of being hated so much that it deserves a zero. Sorry, this book doesn't even deserve one bit, one fleck, one dot of stardust on it.
So this review might turn out to be a bit chaotic, I am sorry for that.
First of all, sit down, grab a cup of tea or coffee and enjoy my rant/review about this book!
Now, I can hear you all wondering why the hell I went through with this book. What possessed me to push on and finish this book. Well that is an easy one. I am a member of a YA group and we have some lovely challenges. The challenge I had to read this book for is called the Blind Date Challenge and you will have to find and read a book that matches certain things. My partner and I picked out this one since it seemed to be one that had potential and it seemed fun. However, this turned into a lie of big proportions. So yeah, at times I wanted to drop the book, throw with the book, but I didn't stop reading it, because of the challenge.
We also decided that we would do 3 chapters every day... now that isn't that much you would think. Sadly this book's chapters are around 20 to more pages per chapter. So in the end you would have to struggle through 60 to 80 (or more) pages everyday. Not working if you don't like the book.
Now let's start with the book shall we? What is so terrible about it? Let's begin with my favourite thing, the characters.
We have one main character, named Quentin. Immediately from the first chapters I didn't like him, and this dislike grew and grew until I just hated him.
He has a rotten attitude, drools over girls (especially in the beginning over his best friend's girlfriend whom he loves but she didn't want him because he was drooling over magics), he thinks he is so much better than anyone (which he is not), he is at times very negative about things, he is cocky and a lot of other personality things that I just detested.
I didn't like how he treated people, at times I was strongly wondering why the hell people were still hanging out with him. This was also the case with Alice. I just didn't see why these 2 people liked each other. Other than both strong willed and both strong in magics I couldn't really find anything that matched.
Quentin is pretty horrendous, he drools over Alice (a lot), yet he doesn't do anything until he is in a certain form (more on that later). Then he betrays her (a long long time later). Then they love each other again, then not, then yes. It was just so annoying, I kept thinking, girl you deserve better, just leave him.
Quentin does change, however it is for the worst. It seems the stronger he becomes in his powers the worse his attitude becomes. And not only that, his fear and him hiding in a little corner cowering also gets bigger. A lot of times he just leaves stuff to other people (like with the big battle in the end, and yes I don't give a flipflop that he was slightly injured).
All in all, I think Quentin will be on par with a certain anime character named Makoto, who had the same cocky attitude and disregard to women. Sadly that Quentin didn't end up in the way that Makoto did, I think it would have made the book so much better.
Now I could say more about Quentin, but I think I said most of what I wanted and I think that should say enough for everyone why I hated this character.
Alice, ah Alice, you all know the Goodreads Alice (and for those who don't, that is the place holder image if the site dies, which it did quite often), well this book's Alice is even worse than that.
At times the author portrayed her as awesome, kick-ass and could do anything, at other times he treated her as a weak female (yes, more on that later). Alice had the potential, but how she acted (it wasn't only Quentin who was bad with relationships), how she did things just destroyed her character for me. I just couldn't like her, couldn't see why she was so prominently shown, why she took such a big role.
Penny, urgh, my number 3 of most annoying character. I don't really feel like explaining why, but let's just say he pissed me off. His attitude towards things, his anger, his frustration, anything.
There is a whole slew of characters that all get a bit of the spotlight, but I can honestly say that I didn't care, nor had any feelings for them. Ok, I had the occasional, why the hell are you still here feeling. :)
Now, as you can probably read from the blurb most of this book takes place in a magical college somewhere, and the rest of the book is about Fillroy. At that time I didn't really have the feeling of it being a rip-off. However reading through the book and getting the references, seeing Quentin drool over Narni..Fillroy the whole time and seeing the references there.
It was like the writer took Harry Potter, infused it with other magic books about school and learning how to become a wizard (Yes you are a wizard Harry) and then stripped off all the fun, the joy of learning, the good characters (with exception of Hermione (she was probably reincarnated as Alice)) and various other good and happy things. He then added sex, curse words, boring lectures, more curse words and older characters that kept complaining/were totally blergh.
That is the first part. The biggest one and the most obvious one is Narn.. um Fillroy. Sorry. You take a wonderful thing as Narnia, and you morph and manipulate it to make it utterly disgusting. Fillroy was so clearly Narnia (the country, the human kings, the children and so much more) only know for adults. With slutty nymphs (yes that is what they called it), shiny buttocks on some water creature (yes, that is what they said) and a lot of other stuff. Insert cursing, more sexual references and a crappy attitude from all the characters and say bye bye to your childhood books. Because sorry, I feel like reading Narnia just to get that disgusting rip-off (or should I say rape-off) out of my mind. I need to see the clean and lovely place called Narnia, where sure not everything was ok, but at least it had good characters, it had story and it was gorgeous.
Most of the last part is about Fillroy and how our characters spend a good long time there, fighting cursing and making sexual references.
Oh and when you think that ruins it, hold on then, they also make references to Seuss (poor him) and to Oz (noooo, not Oz). So yeah, it destroyed a lot of my favourite books and I am quite pissed at it. Make a rip-off all you want, but keep it good, keep it nice. Don't taint it with 18+ year old people who curse, drink and ruin it.
On the cursing part, I grabbed an ebook (I was reading the paperback from the library) and had a bit of fun checking how many times words were said. I had expected more cursing, since it seemed so prominent, but apparently even with it so prominent it turned out to be not that much.
Fuck: 74 times
Shit: 42 times
Assholes: 10 times
There were also other curse words, but I the ones I mentioned past by quite a bit. In various "creative" ways.
I don't mind cursing that much, but I felt like it wasn't needed for this book. One fuck here and there and that would be fine, but at times I felt like they were just cursing for the sake of it. Because they could, because they were adults, or something like that.
I didn't like one thing in particular, the sex thing. Well, to be correct, the sex while they were transformed into snow foxes part. Seriously, wth, I don't need to know that they had sex while being in the fox form, and I don't need details about his penis pushing deeper in her. NO NO NO NOPE. I was disgusted by this, especially since it just wasn't over after that, no there was lots of awkwardness, like did they see us? What did you think that no one would notice you two getting it on like no tomorrow? *rolls eyes*
Now I am not one to be on the Oh boohoo girls equal rights boohoo etc front, but I just was annoyed at the times that Alice reverts back to normal (because magic is tiring) and then we get this: Suddenly she was a girl again, small and vulnerable.
What the hell? Just because she turns back in a girl doesn't make her weak, small or vulnerable. Just a note, none of the guys ever had a sentence like this. It was only in the case of Alice/(and probably other girls). I wouldn't have minded it that much if the guys also got a similar sentence, but it seems guys are just too awesome!
One of the biggest things I didn't like was also the lack of details or the overdose on details. Some things get over-detailed, while other stuff gets glossed over like they don't mean anything. For instance the old man at the beginning, did he know Quentin was going to that magical school? Or was he just an ordinary man without any knowledge, we will never know, because they killed him off before Quentin met him.
Or the one time where each chapter equals a year of school. The previous chapters would have a bit more information on classes, things happening back then, while a lot of the other years were just skipped over and we would only get one or 2 events that took up the entire chapter.
There was also some kind of game, sorry forgot the name, and I still have no clue how or what the game did.
At times I was utterly bored with the long descriptions about the school, about a certain thing, about the weather (who cares about that) and I was just like: Is this really necessary? So yeah, there were times I was just falling asleep, while yet at other times I would be like: Wait what the hell happened? How did this happen? Wait why do we skip through everything so easily??? Hello???
And I was not only bored, or falling asleep, I was also annoyed or getting angry at the book.
I have had thoughts that I should just burn the book, or throw it of my balcony or just stomp on it, throw it against the wall, but I didn't because while it is an absolute horrendous book, I am against violence towards books and the book was also a library book so I am sure they wouldn't have liked it back in ashes or all ripped. :) Otherwise I would seriously have done it.
There was also one random moment in the book, a moment that I didn't think fitted. Quentin was searching for a place to study (or relax, or whatever) and he stumbled upon a scene where Eliot was about to do things that were probably sexual of nature, gay sexual nature. Let me just say this: I have nothing against people who like the same gender, but I just felt this was out of place, not needed and I was just like, wait what, no, turn away Quentin, I don't need to read about this. It was awkward, it made no sense and it could have easily been left out.
Then we have the ending, I have never been so happy to see an ending, and sadly to say, this one sucked. I am not going to spoil anything, but let's just say I am severely disappointed in it. It was lame, it was cheapskate way to get things done. Though it might have been expected, with this series being a trilogy.
I might have missed some things, so I might edit the review, once again sorry for the chaotic nature of this review, my head is still churning out stuff and I wanted to write stuff down to get it all out of my system. To finally close the book and forget all about it.
Because forget is something I want to do. And maybe invent a time machine so I can stop myself from picking this book, stop myself from even thinking about the book as being good. I wish I could, think of all the time I could invest in better books!
I wouldn't recommend this book to anyone, I would recommend you steer clear of this book and just go to a nicer book with better story and better details and best of all better characters.
Review first posted at http://twirlingbookprincess.com/
So this review might turn out to be a bit chaotic, I am sorry for that.
First of all, sit down, grab a cup of tea or coffee and enjoy my rant/review about this book!
Now, I can hear you all wondering why the hell I went through with this book. What possessed me to push on and finish this book. Well that is an easy one. I am a member of a YA group and we have some lovely challenges. The challenge I had to read this book for is called the Blind Date Challenge and you will have to find and read a book that matches certain things. My partner and I picked out this one since it seemed to be one that had potential and it seemed fun. However, this turned into a lie of big proportions. So yeah, at times I wanted to drop the book, throw with the book, but I didn't stop reading it, because of the challenge.
We also decided that we would do 3 chapters every day... now that isn't that much you would think. Sadly this book's chapters are around 20 to more pages per chapter. So in the end you would have to struggle through 60 to 80 (or more) pages everyday. Not working if you don't like the book.
Now let's start with the book shall we? What is so terrible about it? Let's begin with my favourite thing, the characters.
We have one main character, named Quentin. Immediately from the first chapters I didn't like him, and this dislike grew and grew until I just hated him.
He has a rotten attitude, drools over girls (especially in the beginning over his best friend's girlfriend whom he loves but she didn't want him because he was drooling over magics), he thinks he is so much better than anyone (which he is not), he is at times very negative about things, he is cocky and a lot of other personality things that I just detested.
I didn't like how he treated people, at times I was strongly wondering why the hell people were still hanging out with him. This was also the case with Alice. I just didn't see why these 2 people liked each other. Other than both strong willed and both strong in magics I couldn't really find anything that matched.
Quentin is pretty horrendous, he drools over Alice (a lot), yet he doesn't do anything until he is in a certain form (more on that later). Then he betrays her (a long long time later). Then they love each other again, then not, then yes. It was just so annoying, I kept thinking, girl you deserve better, just leave him.
Quentin does change, however it is for the worst. It seems the stronger he becomes in his powers the worse his attitude becomes. And not only that, his fear and him hiding in a little corner cowering also gets bigger. A lot of times he just leaves stuff to other people (like with the big battle in the end, and yes I don't give a flipflop that he was slightly injured).
All in all, I think Quentin will be on par with a certain anime character named Makoto, who had the same cocky attitude and disregard to women. Sadly that Quentin didn't end up in the way that Makoto did, I think it would have made the book so much better.
Now I could say more about Quentin, but I think I said most of what I wanted and I think that should say enough for everyone why I hated this character.
Alice, ah Alice, you all know the Goodreads Alice (and for those who don't, that is the place holder image if the site dies, which it did quite often), well this book's Alice is even worse than that.
At times the author portrayed her as awesome, kick-ass and could do anything, at other times he treated her as a weak female (yes, more on that later). Alice had the potential, but how she acted (it wasn't only Quentin who was bad with relationships), how she did things just destroyed her character for me. I just couldn't like her, couldn't see why she was so prominently shown, why she took such a big role.
Penny, urgh, my number 3 of most annoying character. I don't really feel like explaining why, but let's just say he pissed me off. His attitude towards things, his anger, his frustration, anything.
There is a whole slew of characters that all get a bit of the spotlight, but I can honestly say that I didn't care, nor had any feelings for them. Ok, I had the occasional, why the hell are you still here feeling. :)
Now, as you can probably read from the blurb most of this book takes place in a magical college somewhere, and the rest of the book is about Fillroy. At that time I didn't really have the feeling of it being a rip-off. However reading through the book and getting the references, seeing Quentin drool over Narni..Fillroy the whole time and seeing the references there.
It was like the writer took Harry Potter, infused it with other magic books about school and learning how to become a wizard (Yes you are a wizard Harry) and then stripped off all the fun, the joy of learning, the good characters (with exception of Hermione (she was probably reincarnated as Alice)) and various other good and happy things. He then added sex, curse words, boring lectures, more curse words and older characters that kept complaining/were totally blergh.
That is the first part. The biggest one and the most obvious one is Narn.. um Fillroy. Sorry. You take a wonderful thing as Narnia, and you morph and manipulate it to make it utterly disgusting. Fillroy was so clearly Narnia (the country, the human kings, the children and so much more) only know for adults. With slutty nymphs (yes that is what they called it), shiny buttocks on some water creature (yes, that is what they said) and a lot of other stuff. Insert cursing, more sexual references and a crappy attitude from all the characters and say bye bye to your childhood books. Because sorry, I feel like reading Narnia just to get that disgusting rip-off (or should I say rape-off) out of my mind. I need to see the clean and lovely place called Narnia, where sure not everything was ok, but at least it had good characters, it had story and it was gorgeous.
Most of the last part is about Fillroy and how our characters spend a good long time there, fighting cursing and making sexual references.
Oh and when you think that ruins it, hold on then, they also make references to Seuss (poor him) and to Oz (noooo, not Oz). So yeah, it destroyed a lot of my favourite books and I am quite pissed at it. Make a rip-off all you want, but keep it good, keep it nice. Don't taint it with 18+ year old people who curse, drink and ruin it.
On the cursing part, I grabbed an ebook (I was reading the paperback from the library) and had a bit of fun checking how many times words were said. I had expected more cursing, since it seemed so prominent, but apparently even with it so prominent it turned out to be not that much.
Fuck: 74 times
Shit: 42 times
Assholes: 10 times
There were also other curse words, but I the ones I mentioned past by quite a bit. In various "creative" ways.
I don't mind cursing that much, but I felt like it wasn't needed for this book. One fuck here and there and that would be fine, but at times I felt like they were just cursing for the sake of it. Because they could, because they were adults, or something like that.
I didn't like one thing in particular, the sex thing. Well, to be correct, the sex while they were transformed into snow foxes part. Seriously, wth, I don't need to know that they had sex while being in the fox form, and I don't need details about his penis pushing deeper in her. NO NO NO NOPE. I was disgusted by this, especially since it just wasn't over after that, no there was lots of awkwardness, like did they see us? What did you think that no one would notice you two getting it on like no tomorrow? *rolls eyes*
Now I am not one to be on the Oh boohoo girls equal rights boohoo etc front, but I just was annoyed at the times that Alice reverts back to normal (because magic is tiring) and then we get this: Suddenly she was a girl again, small and vulnerable.
What the hell? Just because she turns back in a girl doesn't make her weak, small or vulnerable. Just a note, none of the guys ever had a sentence like this. It was only in the case of Alice/(and probably other girls). I wouldn't have minded it that much if the guys also got a similar sentence, but it seems guys are just too awesome!
One of the biggest things I didn't like was also the lack of details or the overdose on details. Some things get over-detailed, while other stuff gets glossed over like they don't mean anything. For instance the old man at the beginning, did he know Quentin was going to that magical school? Or was he just an ordinary man without any knowledge, we will never know, because they killed him off before Quentin met him.
Or the one time where each chapter equals a year of school. The previous chapters would have a bit more information on classes, things happening back then, while a lot of the other years were just skipped over and we would only get one or 2 events that took up the entire chapter.
There was also some kind of game, sorry forgot the name, and I still have no clue how or what the game did.
At times I was utterly bored with the long descriptions about the school, about a certain thing, about the weather (who cares about that) and I was just like: Is this really necessary? So yeah, there were times I was just falling asleep, while yet at other times I would be like: Wait what the hell happened? How did this happen? Wait why do we skip through everything so easily??? Hello???
And I was not only bored, or falling asleep, I was also annoyed or getting angry at the book.
I have had thoughts that I should just burn the book, or throw it of my balcony or just stomp on it, throw it against the wall, but I didn't because while it is an absolute horrendous book, I am against violence towards books and the book was also a library book so I am sure they wouldn't have liked it back in ashes or all ripped. :) Otherwise I would seriously have done it.
There was also one random moment in the book, a moment that I didn't think fitted. Quentin was searching for a place to study (or relax, or whatever) and he stumbled upon a scene where Eliot was about to do things that were probably sexual of nature, gay sexual nature. Let me just say this: I have nothing against people who like the same gender, but I just felt this was out of place, not needed and I was just like, wait what, no, turn away Quentin, I don't need to read about this. It was awkward, it made no sense and it could have easily been left out.
Then we have the ending, I have never been so happy to see an ending, and sadly to say, this one sucked. I am not going to spoil anything, but let's just say I am severely disappointed in it. It was lame, it was cheapskate way to get things done. Though it might have been expected, with this series being a trilogy.
I might have missed some things, so I might edit the review, once again sorry for the chaotic nature of this review, my head is still churning out stuff and I wanted to write stuff down to get it all out of my system. To finally close the book and forget all about it.
Because forget is something I want to do. And maybe invent a time machine so I can stop myself from picking this book, stop myself from even thinking about the book as being good. I wish I could, think of all the time I could invest in better books!
I wouldn't recommend this book to anyone, I would recommend you steer clear of this book and just go to a nicer book with better story and better details and best of all better characters.
Review first posted at http://twirlingbookprincess.com/
melanieroyston's review against another edition
1.0
I couldn't even get through the first 100 pages of this book--it was THAT bad. Coming from one who cannot stand leaving a book unfinished, it was a big deal to decide to put this one down and never return to it. There were so many missed opportunities to give this book depth and life. Something that could have such potential ended up being one of the most disappointing books I have ever attempted to read.
baileyyyym's review
adventurous
dark
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
magnolia4039's review against another edition
adventurous
emotional
funny
mysterious
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
3.0
doods's review against another edition
3.0
I liked the aimless nature of this. It was really interesting to see a world of magic through the eyes of someone dissatisfied with life. Where I think the book faulters is that it just doesnt go into that concept very much. Also I cant stand an ending like that on a cliffhanger. Basically a slap in the face saying "buy the next one" Just end this book in his office and then open the next with them blowing up the window. Grow a spine and end your books.
shelby96gt's review against another edition
dark
mysterious
sad
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
2.0
Didn’t get interesting until about 75% of the way in and even then it still dragged and skipped over the interesting bits. I do not dnf books but seriously considered it for this book. I will not read the other ones and will just read a summary of them to satisfy my curiosity as to how the series wraps up.
fuchsiarascal's review against another edition
adventurous
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
2.0
Good lord, I finally finished it and am so happy about that. Listen, it's not often that you get to say the TV show is better than the book (especially if the book came first), but this is an exception. Reading it just made me miss the show and all the actual character development and fun in it... so I got the DVDs from the library while I sludged through this. And it's a shame, because I really had high hopes for this, being a huge fan of the show.
So, let's be honest, the book absolutely reads like a self-insert fanfic of Harry Potter and Chronicles of Narnia... but in the most insufferable way. All the focus is on Quentin (in the show, the focus gets split between characters pretty evenly), and he's just... a terrible person. Not necessarily morally terrible, just terrible to be around. And, listen, I'm a big fan of characters who start out insufferable and you eventually come around to (see: almost all of the Graceling series main characters), but he never has any growth, he never sees his own faults or thinks, "Hmm, maybe I'm the problem." And he just gets away with it!He sleeps with Janet, then Alice sleeps with Penny after they break up, and *she's* the bad guy? And then she goes to Fillory "to protect and save him" (her words!) to... win him back? Definitely a guy's wet dream fanfic.
And, sure, you can have a main character who's disillusioned and pretentious and insufferable, and the point of the story can be that "magic doesn't fix things", but... Lev Grossman does absolutely nothing clever or even interesting with this premise. It's just suffering on top of suffering. When I read that he attended Yale and Harvard, it all made sense: this is genre fiction that aims to be "higher brow" than your standard fare of genre fiction, because Grossman had a boner for HP but it's too "common", but The Magicians lacks all the charm of what makes fantasy good.
In list format, this book has so many things that should be great. Give me chronically depressed characters! Spin the expectation that magic makes everything better (although many fantasy fans would already know this isn't the case)! Give me real problems mixed with fantasy! But Grossman seems to miss the point with all of this, with why people enjoy fantasy. It's not because of the magic. To quote Coraline from Neil Gaiman: “Fairy tales are more than true: not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten.” (Just replace fairy tales with fantasy; I promise it still works.) Fine, they beat the big bad with magic, but they're still miserable sacks of shit. Where's the satisfaction? Oh, right, because they need therapy and self-reflection, which is sorely missing from this book.
To be clear, I didn't hate this book with the intensity of a thousand suns (that would be a one star rating); it was just boring and had no charm. I don't want to read the other two in the series because this was so bad, but I probably will because I have a perverse need to see how it goes (I really can't leave series unfinished, it's a curse!) and how it differs from the show.
I switched back and forth between audiobook and printed versions for this; the audiobook narrator was decent but probably would've been more enjoyable if I had enjoyed the text 😅
So, let's be honest, the book absolutely reads like a self-insert fanfic of Harry Potter and Chronicles of Narnia... but in the most insufferable way. All the focus is on Quentin (in the show, the focus gets split between characters pretty evenly), and he's just... a terrible person. Not necessarily morally terrible, just terrible to be around. And, listen, I'm a big fan of characters who start out insufferable and you eventually come around to (see: almost all of the Graceling series main characters), but he never has any growth, he never sees his own faults or thinks, "Hmm, maybe I'm the problem." And he just gets away with it!
And, sure, you can have a main character who's disillusioned and pretentious and insufferable, and the point of the story can be that "magic doesn't fix things", but... Lev Grossman does absolutely nothing clever or even interesting with this premise. It's just suffering on top of suffering. When I read that he attended Yale and Harvard, it all made sense: this is genre fiction that aims to be "higher brow" than your standard fare of genre fiction, because Grossman had a boner for HP but it's too "common", but The Magicians lacks all the charm of what makes fantasy good.
In list format, this book has so many things that should be great. Give me chronically depressed characters! Spin the expectation that magic makes everything better (although many fantasy fans would already know this isn't the case)! Give me real problems mixed with fantasy! But Grossman seems to miss the point with all of this, with why people enjoy fantasy. It's not because of the magic. To quote Coraline from Neil Gaiman: “Fairy tales are more than true: not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten.” (Just replace fairy tales with fantasy; I promise it still works.) Fine, they beat the big bad with magic, but they're still miserable sacks of shit. Where's the satisfaction? Oh, right, because they need therapy and self-reflection, which is sorely missing from this book.
To be clear, I didn't hate this book with the intensity of a thousand suns (that would be a one star rating); it was just boring and had no charm. I don't want to read the other two in the series because this was so bad, but I probably will because I have a perverse need to see how it goes (I really can't leave series unfinished, it's a curse!) and how it differs from the show.
I switched back and forth between audiobook and printed versions for this; the audiobook narrator was decent but probably would've been more enjoyable if I had enjoyed the text 😅
wicklowgirl's review against another edition
3.75
I dnf’d at 67%, right before they got to fillory, i just wasn’t liking any of the characters and it felt like they weren’t supposed to go there
s_h_a_r_i's review against another edition
3.0
This book feels like a combination of Harry Potter/Narnia fanfiction. Was a rather fun read, but at the same time, managed to pack some of the most annoying characters possible into a single book.