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zen_chaos 's review for:
The Magicians
by Lev Grossman
This was a page-turner - a creative refashioning of a few classic fantasy novels with an unlikely protagonist - that kept me reading.
That being said, It is rare to nonexistent in my life that I ever experience a sentiment other than: The book did it better. This is one of those unicorn cases: many choices made by the T.V. show enhanced the plot in ways that were lacking from the original novel. I'm not sure if I would still feel this way if I had read the book before seeing the show, and if I will still think the same after reading the follow-up novels of the trilogy, remains yet to be seen.
Spoilers [of show and book]:
A few of the choices that I felt were better in the show: Brakebills being after Quentin went to a normal college / Quentin being older at the start instead of fresh out of high school; the Beasts' continual threats of Brakebills students [while they are there] being the motivation to go to Fillory [rather than it being a lark that happens after graduation b/c they are bored and drinking]; Alice being a genius top of the class [rather than Eliot] who is only at the school due to a mission of finding out what happens to her brother/her finding out through investigative work and the dramatic scene when she tries to contact him [rather than just finding out perchance when a fellow classmate tells a story to the freshmen and Alice knowing by inference that Janet was referring to Alice's brother]; the flashes back and forth between Julia's story becoming a hedge witch simultaneously as Quentin was at Brakebills [this is an excellent juxtaposition that says a bit about the production of knowledge in both official and unofficial settings/a commentary perhaps on the different paths we end up down due to bureacracy/opportunity limits but the value-though also danger-of what's outside the construction of safety/outside the shelter of ivory walls]; Julia's role in the plot-connection to Quentin's plot; the elimination of certain characters/replacement of their actions by other characters [more narrow focus/less extraneous characters]; Penny being less of a loner/the keeping of his girlfriend's badass character [can't remember her name now that I've just read the book-where she dies early on-in comparison to the show watched a few weeks ago- and her own plot, with her mom and the connections b/w the hedgewitches and brakebills], the fact that Quentin was unskeptical in the show and that magic saved him from his depression [it wavered in the book-the beginning he seems to be the most believing, but when they're leaving for Fillory he doesn't even seem excited as much as the others, oddly; also he is still fairly morose about life following magic in the book-though in fairness that does come later, paralleled with letdowns on post-graduate life that many contemporaries can relate to], and the centralization [as disturbing and dark as it is] of the reason that Martin Chatwin became the Beast /the parallel of the loss of innocence with the shattering of the illusion of both what Fillory is and what Plover/the author of his favorite books was like [never meet your heroes]. All of this enhanced the plot scoresworth.
In praise of the book though, I did find more of the descriptions of the particular adventures, and characters, in Fillory interesting - the book definately draws on Narnia more than the show. I liked that the author's connections to loss and conquering of fillory by human invaders resembled a bit that reminded me of both human's domination over nature and of conquering humans imperialism based on mythic pretenses, the reflection on the feelings of Quentin when the first talking-animals are killed on their quest, the inner reflections on what the quest means from Quentin when he realizes it's a sham/he's misled, the description of Ember /the Ram God [who looks more like a giant rock-sheep in my book-led imagination rather than seeming to be Krampus in the show], and some of the additional information given from/encounters described with the WatcherWoman. And, whatever it's drawbacks, it still has me eager to read the next installment!
--
Second Time through:
Think I liked this more on the reread than my initial run through - was far enough away from what I saw on the show to mostly just go with it. :)
That being said, It is rare to nonexistent in my life that I ever experience a sentiment other than: The book did it better. This is one of those unicorn cases: many choices made by the T.V. show enhanced the plot in ways that were lacking from the original novel. I'm not sure if I would still feel this way if I had read the book before seeing the show, and if I will still think the same after reading the follow-up novels of the trilogy, remains yet to be seen.
Spoilers [of show and book]:
A few of the choices that I felt were better in the show: Brakebills being after Quentin went to a normal college / Quentin being older at the start instead of fresh out of high school; the Beasts' continual threats of Brakebills students [while they are there] being the motivation to go to Fillory [rather than it being a lark that happens after graduation b/c they are bored and drinking]; Alice being a genius top of the class [rather than Eliot] who is only at the school due to a mission of finding out what happens to her brother/her finding out through investigative work and the dramatic scene when she tries to contact him [rather than just finding out perchance when a fellow classmate tells a story to the freshmen and Alice knowing by inference that Janet was referring to Alice's brother]; the flashes back and forth between Julia's story becoming a hedge witch simultaneously as Quentin was at Brakebills [this is an excellent juxtaposition that says a bit about the production of knowledge in both official and unofficial settings/a commentary perhaps on the different paths we end up down due to bureacracy/opportunity limits but the value-though also danger-of what's outside the construction of safety/outside the shelter of ivory walls]; Julia's role in the plot-connection to Quentin's plot; the elimination of certain characters/replacement of their actions by other characters [more narrow focus/less extraneous characters]; Penny being less of a loner/the keeping of his girlfriend's badass character [can't remember her name now that I've just read the book-where she dies early on-in comparison to the show watched a few weeks ago- and her own plot, with her mom and the connections b/w the hedgewitches and brakebills], the fact that Quentin was unskeptical in the show and that magic saved him from his depression [it wavered in the book-the beginning he seems to be the most believing, but when they're leaving for Fillory he doesn't even seem excited as much as the others, oddly; also he is still fairly morose about life following magic in the book-though in fairness that does come later, paralleled with letdowns on post-graduate life that many contemporaries can relate to], and the centralization [as disturbing and dark as it is] of the reason that Martin Chatwin became the Beast /the parallel of the loss of innocence with the shattering of the illusion of both what Fillory is and what Plover/the author of his favorite books was like [never meet your heroes]. All of this enhanced the plot scoresworth.
In praise of the book though, I did find more of the descriptions of the particular adventures, and characters, in Fillory interesting - the book definately draws on Narnia more than the show. I liked that the author's connections to loss and conquering of fillory by human invaders resembled a bit that reminded me of both human's domination over nature and of conquering humans imperialism based on mythic pretenses, the reflection on the feelings of Quentin when the first talking-animals are killed on their quest, the inner reflections on what the quest means from Quentin when he realizes it's a sham/he's misled, the description of Ember /the Ram God [who looks more like a giant rock-sheep in my book-led imagination rather than seeming to be Krampus in the show], and some of the additional information given from/encounters described with the WatcherWoman. And, whatever it's drawbacks, it still has me eager to read the next installment!
--
Second Time through:
Think I liked this more on the reread than my initial run through - was far enough away from what I saw on the show to mostly just go with it. :)