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missflyer 's review for:
The Magicians
by Lev Grossman
“But somewhere in the heat of magic that boundary between word and thing ruptures. It cracks, and the one flows back into the other, and the two melt together and fuse. Language gets tangled up with the world it describes.”
The above quote is one of my favorites from this book, though there were a couple others (mingled in with additional quotes below) which were tough seconds. I’ll grasp onto the magic part of this book, even though its presence was not always front-and-center. That’s the thing: magic is treated, at least in the Brakebills world, like something extraordinarily ordinary – at least for those who are able to use it. It is for a very small segment of the population, but has less rhyme and reason for its existence and even less for the logic of when and how it appears and manifests to those who are capable of using it. It’s selective, and even if you check the main boxes of requirements to do magic, you can’t always, as Eliot so nicely points out (quoted below).
The first book section of this was both long and short – it covers about 4 years, and seemed to be the first half of the book, or nearly. A lot happens, and there are a lot of plot seeds planted which we don’t see come to fruition until books 2-4. First and second years went by well, but I think third and fourth/fifth seemed a bit rushed in comparison, excepting the chapter Mary Byrd Land, which was a good, long, growth-inducing chapter. Books 2-4 went by in a mix of fast and slow, such as the time immediately following graduation seemed too long and drudging, but once they, things picked up better, and other than Quentin being especially jerk-like, the story was back on track. Though considering how well-read and well-studied the entire group was, I found some of their decisions on actions to take groan-inducing, of the kind “Why would you do that? You should know well enough that is exactly what NOT to do, you should have done ____, clearly!” Especially since they had awareness of real-world culture events, like the several Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings references, and some others that I’m sure I didn’t catch for not knowing the reference exactly but recognizing that it must be one. I’m finding that I rather appreciate when characters in my urban fantasy-type stories with this sort of awareness, like little nods to us the reader – anything is possible, and why can’t it be real after all?
I was surprised to find myself relating to Quentin much more than I thought I would, especially considering his irascible streak. But many different aspects of him spoke directly to me regardless, and except for when he was being a complete buttheaded jerk (especially after graduation), I was pretty okay with him as a focal point. The rest of the cast, especially the Physical kids, were quite diverse in personality and abilities, and played well off of each other. I enjoyed seeing how they grew together, how they interacted, how they learned from each other (though not always good things…). There was also a fair amount of good, philosophically-bent observations scattered throughout the book, many of which I included in the quotes section down below. I love it when there’s little nuggets of wisdom blended into my fantasy – it makes the connection between real-life and book-life that much stronger and accessible.
I’ll definitely be reading the rest of the trilogy, since with that ending, I’m really curious what’s coming next. Plus I for one had not yet had enough of where they went, and want to know what all Quentin is capable of now that he’s put his mind to it, as well as the others.
Quotes and selected commentary:
[Quentin reflected on getting in to Fillory…] it’s like he’s opening the covers of a book, but a book that did what books always promised to do and never actually quite did: get you out, really out, of where you were and into somewhere better. – Brooklyn, page 16/53
[Quentin had] spent so many years pining for something like this, some proof that the real world wasn’t the only world, and coping with the overwhelming evidence that it in fact was. – Eliot, page 10/48
Meaning—is that what magic was?—was everywhere here [at Brakebills]. – Eliot, page 28/48
“The reasons why most people can’t do magic? Well.” Eliot held up a long, thin finger. “One, it’s very hard, and they’re not smart enough. Two, it’s very hard, and they’re not obsessive and miserable enough to do all the work you have to do to do it right. Three, they lack the guidance and mentorship provided by the dedicated and startlingly charismatic faculty of the Brakebills College for Magical Pedagogy. And four, they lack the tough, starchy moral fiber necessary to wield awesome magical energies calmly and responsibly.
“And five,”—he stuck up his thumb—“some people have all that stuff and they still can’t do it. Nobody knows why. They say the words, wave their arms, and nothing happens. Poor bastards. But that’s not us. We’re the lucky ones. We have it, whatever it is.” – Eliot, page 38-39/48
Alice wasn’t just the competition, someone whose only purpose in life was to succeed and by doing so subtract from his happiness. She was a person with her own hopes and feelings and history and nightmares. In her own way she was as lost as he was. – Snow, page 42-43/47
Once magic was real everything else just seemed so unreal. – The Missing Boy, page 8/69
You just had to get some idea of what matters and what doesn’t, and how much, and try not to be scared of the stuff that doesn’t. Put it in perspective. Something like that. Or otherwise what was the point? – Lovelady, page 63-64/66
“The problem with growing up,” Quentin said, “is that once you’re grown up, people who aren’t grown up aren’t fun anymore.” – Fifth Year, page 21-22/49
“[…] If there’s a single lesson that life teaches us, it’s that wishing doesn’t make it so. Words and thoughts don’t change anything. Language and reality are kept strictly apart—reality is tough, unyielding stuff, and it doesn’t care what you think or feel or say about it. Or it shouldn’t. You deal with it, and you get on with your life.
“Little children don’t know that. Magical thinking: that’s what Freud called it. Once we learn otherwise we cease to be children. The separation of word and thing is the essential fact on which our adult lives are founded.
“But somewhere in the heat of magic that boundary between word and thing ruptures. It cracks, and the one flows back into the other, and the two melt together and fuse. Language gets tangled up with the world it describes.” – Graduation, page 39-40/55
“[…] I think you’re magicians because you’re unhappy. A magician is strong because he feels pain. He feels the difference between what the world is and what he would make of it. Or what did you think that stuff in your chest was? A magician is strong because he hurts more than others. His wound is his strength. […] You have learned to break the world that has tried to break you.” – Graduation, page 41-42/55
Who would ever have thought he could do and have and be all those things and still feel nothing at all? What was he missing? Or was it him? If he wasn’t happy even here, even now, did the flaw lie in him? As soon as he seized happiness it dispersed and reappeared somewhere else. Like Fillory, like everything good, it never lasted. What a terrible thing to know.
I got my heart’s desire, he thought, and there my troubles began. –Graduation, page 53-54/55
Now Quentin could play the reasonable one, and he did it with maximum nastiness. “Slow down. You’ve gotten so far ahead of yourself, you can’t even see how you got there. You’ve seen an old city, and a bunch of pools and fountains, and you’ve got a button with some heavy-duty enchantments on it, and you’re looking for some framework to fit them all together, and you’ve latched on to this Fillory thing. But you’re grasping at straws. It’s crazy. You’re cramming a few chance data points into a story that has nothing to do with reality. You need to take a giant step back. Take a deep breath. You’re way off the reservation.” – Penny’s Story, page 40-41/42 – That’s how I am when people claim magic – much as I want to believe it, everything logical must be ruled out first before I could be convinced of it.
And now that he was here [in Fillory] it would finally be all right. He didn’t see how yet, but it would. It had to be. […] This was the place. He would be picked up, cleaned off, and made to feel safe and happy and whole again here. How had everything gone so wrong? […] This was his life now, the life he had always been waiting for. It was finally here. – Fillory, page 28-29/78
In a way fighting like this was just like using magic. You said the words, and they altered the universe. By merely speaking you could create damage and pain, cause tears to fall, drive people away, make yourself feel better, make your life worse. –Ember’s Tomb, page 49/92
“I will stop being a mouse, Quentin. I will take some chances. If you will, for just one second, look at your life and see how perfect it is. Stop looking for the next secret door that is going to lead you to your real life. Stop waiting. This is it: there’s nothing else. It’s here, and you’d better decide to enjoy it or you’re going to be miserable wherever you go, for the rest of your life, forever.” [said Alice]. – Ember’s Tomb, page 55-56/92
The trick was just not wanting anything. That was power. That was courage: the courage not to love anyone or hope for anything. – The Retreat, page 56/64 – this had me despairing for Quentin’s mental and overall health :(
Being brave was easy when you would rather die than give up. Fatigue meant nothing when you actually wanted to suffer. – The White Stag, page 6/26
“You need to see that all this evil, all this sadness, it all comes from magic. It’s where all your trouble began. Nobody can be touched by that much power without being corrupted. It’s what corrupted me, Quentin, before I gave it up. It’s the hardest thing I ever did. […] Sooner or later magic always leads to evil. Once you see that then you’ll see how to forgive yourself. It will get easier. I promise you.” – Kings and Queens, page 22-23/37 – I don’t believe her. Magic doesn’t lead to evil, humans lead to evil.
The above quote is one of my favorites from this book, though there were a couple others (mingled in with additional quotes below) which were tough seconds. I’ll grasp onto the magic part of this book, even though its presence was not always front-and-center. That’s the thing: magic is treated, at least in the Brakebills world, like something extraordinarily ordinary – at least for those who are able to use it. It is for a very small segment of the population, but has less rhyme and reason for its existence and even less for the logic of when and how it appears and manifests to those who are capable of using it. It’s selective, and even if you check the main boxes of requirements to do magic, you can’t always, as Eliot so nicely points out (quoted below).
The first book section of this was both long and short – it covers about 4 years, and seemed to be the first half of the book, or nearly. A lot happens, and there are a lot of plot seeds planted which we don’t see come to fruition until books 2-4. First and second years went by well, but I think third and fourth/fifth seemed a bit rushed in comparison, excepting the chapter Mary Byrd Land, which was a good, long, growth-inducing chapter. Books 2-4 went by in a mix of fast and slow, such as the time immediately following graduation seemed too long and drudging, but once they
Spoiler
finally went to FilloryI was surprised to find myself relating to Quentin much more than I thought I would, especially considering his irascible streak. But many different aspects of him spoke directly to me regardless, and except for when he was being a complete buttheaded jerk (especially after graduation), I was pretty okay with him as a focal point. The rest of the cast, especially the Physical kids, were quite diverse in personality and abilities, and played well off of each other. I enjoyed seeing how they grew together, how they interacted, how they learned from each other (though not always good things…). There was also a fair amount of good, philosophically-bent observations scattered throughout the book, many of which I included in the quotes section down below. I love it when there’s little nuggets of wisdom blended into my fantasy – it makes the connection between real-life and book-life that much stronger and accessible.
I’ll definitely be reading the rest of the trilogy, since with that ending, I’m really curious what’s coming next. Plus I for one had not yet had enough of where they went, and want to know what all Quentin is capable of now that he’s put his mind to it, as well as the others.
Quotes and selected commentary:
[Quentin reflected on getting in to Fillory…] it’s like he’s opening the covers of a book, but a book that did what books always promised to do and never actually quite did: get you out, really out, of where you were and into somewhere better. – Brooklyn, page 16/53
[Quentin had] spent so many years pining for something like this, some proof that the real world wasn’t the only world, and coping with the overwhelming evidence that it in fact was. – Eliot, page 10/48
Meaning—is that what magic was?—was everywhere here [at Brakebills]. – Eliot, page 28/48
“The reasons why most people can’t do magic? Well.” Eliot held up a long, thin finger. “One, it’s very hard, and they’re not smart enough. Two, it’s very hard, and they’re not obsessive and miserable enough to do all the work you have to do to do it right. Three, they lack the guidance and mentorship provided by the dedicated and startlingly charismatic faculty of the Brakebills College for Magical Pedagogy. And four, they lack the tough, starchy moral fiber necessary to wield awesome magical energies calmly and responsibly.
“And five,”—he stuck up his thumb—“some people have all that stuff and they still can’t do it. Nobody knows why. They say the words, wave their arms, and nothing happens. Poor bastards. But that’s not us. We’re the lucky ones. We have it, whatever it is.” – Eliot, page 38-39/48
Alice wasn’t just the competition, someone whose only purpose in life was to succeed and by doing so subtract from his happiness. She was a person with her own hopes and feelings and history and nightmares. In her own way she was as lost as he was. – Snow, page 42-43/47
Once magic was real everything else just seemed so unreal. – The Missing Boy, page 8/69
Spoiler
[…] but the strange thing was that nobody said anything about [the little joke he’d played on March]. He almost wished they would. He didn’t know whether he’d committed the perfect crime or a crime so public and unspeakable that nobody could bring themselves to confront him about it in broad daylight. He was trapped: he couldn’t grieve properly for Amanda because he felt like he’d killed her, and he couldn’t atone for killing her because he couldn’t confess, not even to Alice. He didn’t know how. So instead he kept his little particle of shame and filth inside, where it could fester and turn septic. – Lovelady, page 6/66You just had to get some idea of what matters and what doesn’t, and how much, and try not to be scared of the stuff that doesn’t. Put it in perspective. Something like that. Or otherwise what was the point? – Lovelady, page 63-64/66
Spoiler
“Vix” was a term of endearment with them, short for vixen, an allusion to their Antarctic interlude, vixen being the word for a female fox. – Fifth Year, page 9/49 – That was, at least for me, a wholly unnecessary explanation. And that last bit defining “vixen” especially. There were other words that are less common that have been used that would have been more worthy of an in-text obvious definition than “vixen.”“The problem with growing up,” Quentin said, “is that once you’re grown up, people who aren’t grown up aren’t fun anymore.” – Fifth Year, page 21-22/49
“[…] If there’s a single lesson that life teaches us, it’s that wishing doesn’t make it so. Words and thoughts don’t change anything. Language and reality are kept strictly apart—reality is tough, unyielding stuff, and it doesn’t care what you think or feel or say about it. Or it shouldn’t. You deal with it, and you get on with your life.
“Little children don’t know that. Magical thinking: that’s what Freud called it. Once we learn otherwise we cease to be children. The separation of word and thing is the essential fact on which our adult lives are founded.
“But somewhere in the heat of magic that boundary between word and thing ruptures. It cracks, and the one flows back into the other, and the two melt together and fuse. Language gets tangled up with the world it describes.” – Graduation, page 39-40/55
“[…] I think you’re magicians because you’re unhappy. A magician is strong because he feels pain. He feels the difference between what the world is and what he would make of it. Or what did you think that stuff in your chest was? A magician is strong because he hurts more than others. His wound is his strength. […] You have learned to break the world that has tried to break you.” – Graduation, page 41-42/55
Who would ever have thought he could do and have and be all those things and still feel nothing at all? What was he missing? Or was it him? If he wasn’t happy even here, even now, did the flaw lie in him? As soon as he seized happiness it dispersed and reappeared somewhere else. Like Fillory, like everything good, it never lasted. What a terrible thing to know.
I got my heart’s desire, he thought, and there my troubles began. –Graduation, page 53-54/55
Now Quentin could play the reasonable one, and he did it with maximum nastiness. “Slow down. You’ve gotten so far ahead of yourself, you can’t even see how you got there. You’ve seen an old city, and a bunch of pools and fountains, and you’ve got a button with some heavy-duty enchantments on it, and you’re looking for some framework to fit them all together, and you’ve latched on to this Fillory thing. But you’re grasping at straws. It’s crazy. You’re cramming a few chance data points into a story that has nothing to do with reality. You need to take a giant step back. Take a deep breath. You’re way off the reservation.” – Penny’s Story, page 40-41/42 – That’s how I am when people claim magic – much as I want to believe it, everything logical must be ruled out first before I could be convinced of it.
And now that he was here [in Fillory] it would finally be all right. He didn’t see how yet, but it would. It had to be. […] This was the place. He would be picked up, cleaned off, and made to feel safe and happy and whole again here. How had everything gone so wrong? […] This was his life now, the life he had always been waiting for. It was finally here. – Fillory, page 28-29/78
In a way fighting like this was just like using magic. You said the words, and they altered the universe. By merely speaking you could create damage and pain, cause tears to fall, drive people away, make yourself feel better, make your life worse. –Ember’s Tomb, page 49/92
“I will stop being a mouse, Quentin. I will take some chances. If you will, for just one second, look at your life and see how perfect it is. Stop looking for the next secret door that is going to lead you to your real life. Stop waiting. This is it: there’s nothing else. It’s here, and you’d better decide to enjoy it or you’re going to be miserable wherever you go, for the rest of your life, forever.” [said Alice]. – Ember’s Tomb, page 55-56/92
The trick was just not wanting anything. That was power. That was courage: the courage not to love anyone or hope for anything. – The Retreat, page 56/64 – this had me despairing for Quentin’s mental and overall health :(
Being brave was easy when you would rather die than give up. Fatigue meant nothing when you actually wanted to suffer. – The White Stag, page 6/26
“You need to see that all this evil, all this sadness, it all comes from magic. It’s where all your trouble began. Nobody can be touched by that much power without being corrupted. It’s what corrupted me, Quentin, before I gave it up. It’s the hardest thing I ever did. […] Sooner or later magic always leads to evil. Once you see that then you’ll see how to forgive yourself. It will get easier. I promise you.” – Kings and Queens, page 22-23/37 – I don’t believe her. Magic doesn’t lead to evil, humans lead to evil.