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3.44 AVERAGE
3.44 AVERAGE
so, so weird. took itself too seriously or not seriously enough? annoying, baffling protaganist. narnia references like woah. cool concepts but completely devoid of emotional background - saying "He's in love" isn't the same as writing a character who's in love. tell tell tell tell tell.
I wanted this to be an edgier Harry Potter-esque story, but it was much bleaker and much less funny than I wanted it to be. Alas.
This book was not what I expected it to be. It was fun at parts, but over all I was very disappointed.
I started watching the TV adaptation of this and got through three episodes before realising I should go back and read the novel first. My brother Matt had enthused to me about this novel a couple of years ago – he really enjoyed the way it depicts magic as being both something innate and also a very hard-won skill that requires precision and intensive study. (Matt is a dentist who, after several years' professional practice, decided to go back for a law degree; precision and intensive study are kind of his thing.)
The magical parallel world of Fillory is a Narnia pastiche, and one thing I enjoyed about The Magicians is its commentary on fantasy fiction fandom and how people build meaning in their own lives around their consumption of these texts. (I saw Grossman in conversation with Rainbow Rowell at last year's Melbourne Writers' Festival on the subject of novels-within-novels.) There are also a lot of digs in The Magicians at the expense of other beloved fantasy franchises such as Harry Potter and Star Trek.
Quentin, the protagonist of this novel, is an ambivalent portrait of a hero-as-fanboy - sooky, jealous of anyone who threatens his fragile self-image as a prodigy, and always certain a better life awaits him somewhere other than where he is. Yet Grossman ultimately does depict Quentin as special and super-smart – a Chosen One.
Brakebills College for Magical Pedagogy is also a familiar fantasy. It's an Anglophilic hybrid of Hogwarts (complete with 'sorting' into specialties, and the intervarsity sport of welters, Brakebills' answer to quidditch); of the Oxford of Evelyn Waugh's Brideshead Revisited (it's no accident that the flamboyantly queer, dipsomaniac character Eliot has the surname Waugh); and of the preppy but dissolute, coterie-driven Camden/Hampden College of Bret Easton Ellis and Donna Tartt.
Obviously I found this intensely enjoyable to read because I love all this world-building shit, and stories about coteries of brilliant weirdos. The Magicians is also edgier than many YA franchises, which never let anything bad happen to their characters. There's plenty of sex, mutilation, and an undertone of adult manipulation that feels quite intertextual, considering the case of JM Barrie and Llewellyn Davies boys. Magicians, it's suggested, get their power from suffering.
While this book sometimes staggers under the weight of its homages, ultimately I gave it four stars because it gave me a similar feeling to Ursula Le Guin's Earthsea cycle – a joy in the uncanniness of magic, and a sense that wielding magic is transformative and melancholy.
The magical parallel world of Fillory is a Narnia pastiche, and one thing I enjoyed about The Magicians is its commentary on fantasy fiction fandom and how people build meaning in their own lives around their consumption of these texts. (I saw Grossman in conversation with Rainbow Rowell at last year's Melbourne Writers' Festival on the subject of novels-within-novels.) There are also a lot of digs in The Magicians at the expense of other beloved fantasy franchises such as Harry Potter and Star Trek.
Quentin, the protagonist of this novel, is an ambivalent portrait of a hero-as-fanboy - sooky, jealous of anyone who threatens his fragile self-image as a prodigy, and always certain a better life awaits him somewhere other than where he is. Yet Grossman ultimately does depict Quentin as special and super-smart – a Chosen One.
Brakebills College for Magical Pedagogy is also a familiar fantasy. It's an Anglophilic hybrid of Hogwarts (complete with 'sorting' into specialties, and the intervarsity sport of welters, Brakebills' answer to quidditch); of the Oxford of Evelyn Waugh's Brideshead Revisited (it's no accident that the flamboyantly queer, dipsomaniac character Eliot has the surname Waugh); and of the preppy but dissolute, coterie-driven Camden/Hampden College of Bret Easton Ellis and Donna Tartt.
Obviously I found this intensely enjoyable to read because I love all this world-building shit, and stories about coteries of brilliant weirdos. The Magicians is also edgier than many YA franchises, which never let anything bad happen to their characters. There's plenty of sex, mutilation, and an undertone of adult manipulation that feels quite intertextual, considering the case of JM Barrie and Llewellyn Davies boys. Magicians, it's suggested, get their power from suffering.
While this book sometimes staggers under the weight of its homages, ultimately I gave it four stars because it gave me a similar feeling to Ursula Le Guin's Earthsea cycle – a joy in the uncanniness of magic, and a sense that wielding magic is transformative and melancholy.
I'm not sure how I feel about this one. It was well written. I immensely enjoyed certain sentences. But most of the characters were awful people, and awful things happened to them, and in the end I didn't feel a sense of resolution. Or maybe it just wasn't satisfying? It shares aspects with Ellen Kushner's Tam Lin, but that book has a happy ending and this one just has a promise of more shit to come. That said, it was a well written story that I didn't wholly enjoy, so go for it if you like tales with a darker, nasty bent.
a very shaky 2.5 stars
to keep it short, this book was thoroughly unconvincing. the only reason for my rating is because there were parts i enjoyed and things i did find myself attached to, but the pacing of this whole thing was so odd that everything was over before it even had a chance to properly begin. and theoretically i should've loved this; i could see the parallels to harry potter and the secret history - but that being said it lacked everything i loved about those books. this was just so odd and i'm quite frankly not sure what the point of it all was, but i also own the other 2 books so like what am i gonna do say no
to keep it short, this book was thoroughly unconvincing. the only reason for my rating is because there were parts i enjoyed and things i did find myself attached to, but the pacing of this whole thing was so odd that everything was over before it even had a chance to properly begin. and theoretically i should've loved this; i could see the parallels to harry potter and the secret history - but that being said it lacked everything i loved about those books. this was just so odd and i'm quite frankly not sure what the point of it all was, but i also own the other 2 books so like what am i gonna do say no
Loved the concept. Enjoyed the writing style. A lot. But found myself depressed and angry while reading it, hence the lower rating - I didn't enjoy it as much.
It's taken me a long time to really find words to express my feelings about The Magicians, maybe longer than I meant to. But the only things I keep coming up with is how the story felt like it would have been grander had we explored more than just Quentin's story.
I have absolutely no problems with sticking with just the main character through an entire book, or series for that matter, but there was just so much about Quentin that I couldn't get into. I know we'd find nuances about Janet, Elliot, Penny and such if the story revolved around one of them more, but it made the read just a bit sluggish for me because we were stuck with such an undesirable character. One that doesn't even seem to really change as the story continues.
Besides the MC, I'll admit the universe created was gorgeous. The talk of how magic was used, and the studies of it left me intrigued and honestly is the main type of magic I always imagined. (Less wands, more equations)
I have absolutely no problems with sticking with just the main character through an entire book, or series for that matter, but there was just so much about Quentin that I couldn't get into. I know we'd find nuances about Janet, Elliot, Penny and such if the story revolved around one of them more, but it made the read just a bit sluggish for me because we were stuck with such an undesirable character. One that doesn't even seem to really change as the story continues.
Besides the MC, I'll admit the universe created was gorgeous. The talk of how magic was used, and the studies of it left me intrigued and honestly is the main type of magic I always imagined. (Less wands, more equations)