A review by x0pherl
The Magician King by Lev Grossman

3.0

Didn't like this quite as much as The Magicians. For one thing, one of the major plot lines was based on [b:The Voyage of the Dawn Treader|140225|The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (Chronicles of Narnia, #3)|C.S. Lewis|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1343185059l/140225._SX50_.jpg|3349054], which is one of my least favorite Narnia books, and has a similarly vague and annoying "quest" in it. When a major plot point of your book is a quest to collect taxes, you're maybe doing something wrong. Just saying... For another thing the main character is bored and disaffected for most of the beginning, which had me bored and disafected right alongside him.
There is a very lovely backstory about Julia, which did much to rescue the book, and by the end it picks up and gets interesting.