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A review by reginas_books
The Magician King by Lev Grossman
4.0
New review:
It's interesting what a decade will do to one of my favorite books. I think I was able to read this with a more critical eye now.
A lot of people rate the first book, The Magicians, quite low, so it only makes sense that people going on to read the sequel were tolerant of Quentin being an awful sad sack. Lev Grossman understands the deep, dark trenches that a person's soul can sink into and he puts all of that onto paper without pulling his punches. Quentin is depressed, ungrateful, entitled, and he often finds a way to put the blame on other people. And he continues to be unlikable for most of this one too - I only felt sympathy for him in three brief scenes in this book. Lev Grossman excels at lines that are so blatantly jarring that I kept turning the pages, hoping Quentin would just realize how outrageous and dysfunctional he was being. He only just starts to get there by the end of the book.
For me, The Magician King is largely saved by Julia's backstory, which is told in parallel to Quentin's story. Having also watched the TV show, I wish that Grossman had spent a lot more time fleshing out Julia's character. She goes through a lot, far more than Quentin ever realizes, and the turmoil that she experiences is downplayed a lot due to Grossman's disaffected writing. I think the ending of this book would have felt a lot more powerful and uplifting if readers got more time with Julia.
Unfortunately, I think that the narration is told so solidly from Quentin's point of view that it would feel out of place to have done so.
Old review:
So let me tell you about the way Lev Grossman looks at fairy tales: they're not real. If the ending of the story is happy, it isn't really the end. This is a pretty down-to-earth fantasy writer, and in my opinion, his work blooms all the better for it.
The Magicians was puzzling. It left me confused and hungry for more. I couldn't tell if he was poking fun at the genre, or revolutionizing it. In The Magician King, I think it became a little clearer. The writing is casual, the tone disaffected... Grossman writes in some very meta ways, once commenting that Ember's explanation "closes a plot hole quite neatly,"amusingly self-aware.
But The Magician King does more than just shake up our well-known "Harry Potter grows up and meets the real world" formula. There are real characters that Grossman has written, characters to fall in love with, and cry over. And through all of his haphazard writing comes a very real message: We all want to be the champions of our stories, but what are we willing to give up to get there?
It's interesting what a decade will do to one of my favorite books. I think I was able to read this with a more critical eye now.
A lot of people rate the first book, The Magicians, quite low, so it only makes sense that people going on to read the sequel were tolerant of Quentin being an awful sad sack. Lev Grossman understands the deep, dark trenches that a person's soul can sink into and he puts all of that onto paper without pulling his punches. Quentin is depressed, ungrateful, entitled, and he often finds a way to put the blame on other people. And he continues to be unlikable for most of this one too - I only felt sympathy for him in three brief scenes in this book. Lev Grossman excels at lines that are so blatantly jarring that I kept turning the pages, hoping Quentin would just realize how outrageous and dysfunctional he was being. He only just starts to get there by the end of the book.
For me, The Magician King is largely saved by Julia's backstory, which is told in parallel to Quentin's story. Having also watched the TV show, I wish that Grossman had spent a lot more time fleshing out Julia's character. She goes through a lot, far more than Quentin ever realizes, and the turmoil that she experiences is downplayed a lot due to Grossman's disaffected writing. I think the ending of this book would have felt a lot more powerful and uplifting if readers got more time with Julia.
Unfortunately, I think that the narration is told so solidly from Quentin's point of view that it would feel out of place to have done so.
Old review:
So let me tell you about the way Lev Grossman looks at fairy tales: they're not real. If the ending of the story is happy, it isn't really the end. This is a pretty down-to-earth fantasy writer, and in my opinion, his work blooms all the better for it.
The Magicians was puzzling. It left me confused and hungry for more. I couldn't tell if he was poking fun at the genre, or revolutionizing it. In The Magician King, I think it became a little clearer. The writing is casual, the tone disaffected... Grossman writes in some very meta ways, once commenting that Ember's explanation "closes a plot hole quite neatly,"amusingly self-aware.
But The Magician King does more than just shake up our well-known "Harry Potter grows up and meets the real world" formula. There are real characters that Grossman has written, characters to fall in love with, and cry over. And through all of his haphazard writing comes a very real message: We all want to be the champions of our stories, but what are we willing to give up to get there?