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inkhearted 's review for:
The Magicians
by Lev Grossman
This book tends to move people to experience visceral love-it-or-loathe it reactions for a lot of really understandable reasons. It takes its cues (okay, ALL of them) from beloved series--"classics" you may argue-- like The Chronicles of Narnia and Harry Potter. Too many cues, some same say, and the author and his characters have a truly ambivalent relationship with the source material. I found this kind of tension fascinating, but I see where the critics are coming from.
Quentin, a vaguely nerdy, high school nobody discovers that he has hidden abilities when an invitation to test into a mysterious school sucks him into an underground world of magic hidden from the rest of the world. Quite unlike Harry and his cohorts, Quentin and his new friends use (and misuse) their gifts as you might imagine that flawed, young people with sudden access to a lot of power actually might, and what begins as wonder ends up becoming corrupted into ruthless ambition for some, idle apathy for others. Ultimately, their principles and their friendships will have taken a beating, some past the point of recovery. While gripping (I literally could NOT put this book down when reading it) it's also rather like a car accident watching these young and VERY fallible characters struggle with forces that are always threatening to consume and corrupt them, and as you might expect, the story builds to a pretty dark, startling conclusion. A side plotline about the influence of a Narnia-esque series of books on Quentin and his friends also has a great deal of significance and adds intrigue as the one idealized magical world is juxtaposed against the "real", jaded, corrupted magical world that the characters live in.
As one of my fellow reviewers pointed out, Grossman has the cheek to pop in a few direct references to Harry Potter (jokes or comments made by the characters) and to me those are the times when it just doesn't work. Whenever he does it's as if a curtain is suddenly wrenched back to reveal all the mechanisms underneath. It's just obvious and kind of juvenile. The Fillory parallel to Narnia feels far more effective, and Grossman ends up striking up a pretty satisfying (though admittedly) strange blend of humor and sinister eeriness in developing his portrayal of it. The Magicians succeeds the most when Grossman fully commits to his worlds, even if his readers are fully in on his references all along.
As far as the extent of the borrowing/inspiration, I'll say this. Not having been a fan of the Narnia books, but having grown up devouring E. Nesbit and Edward Eager books, I had my own points of reference that worked just as well for the Fillory parallel without even much of a stretch. Eager, Nesbit, Lewis, Barrie, Baum, Carroll, Pullman, Rowling and other authors of children's tales of magic and wonder are all bound together, compatriots in theme, who all drew on similar inspirations--as well as each other. There's a lot of shared source material for all of them, and Rowling, as great as she is, and as wonderfully as she weaved her stories, borrowed just as much (if not more!) as all of them. Grossman appears to have selected Harry Potter and Narnia as his primary focal points for his commentary, probably one for its current relevance and the other for its enduring legacy, but really, the underlying archetypes and quests cross almost all fantasy. He wisely selected the two that would have the most currency and would have enough of those common elements that would allow him to basically talk about all of those other tales as well--all at once. I can see why this may rankle some readers, but I think what he did made a lot of sense.
Quentin, a vaguely nerdy, high school nobody discovers that he has hidden abilities when an invitation to test into a mysterious school sucks him into an underground world of magic hidden from the rest of the world. Quite unlike Harry and his cohorts, Quentin and his new friends use (and misuse) their gifts as you might imagine that flawed, young people with sudden access to a lot of power actually might, and what begins as wonder ends up becoming corrupted into ruthless ambition for some, idle apathy for others. Ultimately, their principles and their friendships will have taken a beating, some past the point of recovery. While gripping (I literally could NOT put this book down when reading it) it's also rather like a car accident watching these young and VERY fallible characters struggle with forces that are always threatening to consume and corrupt them, and as you might expect, the story builds to a pretty dark, startling conclusion. A side plotline about the influence of a Narnia-esque series of books on Quentin and his friends also has a great deal of significance and adds intrigue as the one idealized magical world is juxtaposed against the "real", jaded, corrupted magical world that the characters live in.
As one of my fellow reviewers pointed out, Grossman has the cheek to pop in a few direct references to Harry Potter (jokes or comments made by the characters) and to me those are the times when it just doesn't work. Whenever he does it's as if a curtain is suddenly wrenched back to reveal all the mechanisms underneath. It's just obvious and kind of juvenile. The Fillory parallel to Narnia feels far more effective, and Grossman ends up striking up a pretty satisfying (though admittedly) strange blend of humor and sinister eeriness in developing his portrayal of it. The Magicians succeeds the most when Grossman fully commits to his worlds, even if his readers are fully in on his references all along.
As far as the extent of the borrowing/inspiration, I'll say this. Not having been a fan of the Narnia books, but having grown up devouring E. Nesbit and Edward Eager books, I had my own points of reference that worked just as well for the Fillory parallel without even much of a stretch. Eager, Nesbit, Lewis, Barrie, Baum, Carroll, Pullman, Rowling and other authors of children's tales of magic and wonder are all bound together, compatriots in theme, who all drew on similar inspirations--as well as each other. There's a lot of shared source material for all of them, and Rowling, as great as she is, and as wonderfully as she weaved her stories, borrowed just as much (if not more!) as all of them. Grossman appears to have selected Harry Potter and Narnia as his primary focal points for his commentary, probably one for its current relevance and the other for its enduring legacy, but really, the underlying archetypes and quests cross almost all fantasy. He wisely selected the two that would have the most currency and would have enough of those common elements that would allow him to basically talk about all of those other tales as well--all at once. I can see why this may rankle some readers, but I think what he did made a lot of sense.