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A review by hirvimaki
The Magicians by Lev Grossman
1.0
So, spoileresque review. If you don't want to read it I can sum it up: I did not like this book.
Meh. Take the wonder out of Hogwarts (or really any school of magic you've ever read about) and replace it with alcoholism and ennui and petty cruelty and you get Brakebills College for Magical Pedagogy, where magic is tedious, boring, and always unfulfilling. Even the bits where you "accidentally" get your classmates murdered. And also Welters. You get Welters. Which sounds like a game I would never want to watch let alone play. Apparently wizard games have to be dumb.
All this alcohol consumption and boredom and mean-spiritedness and Welters is described in painful detail, in a meandering, wandering, pointless sort of way. It wanders. Oh yes it wanders. And at some point you realise you are reading about those people at your school or your work that you don't like because they are all just a-holes. They aren't sophisticated or clever or interesting, but they pretend to be because they are all too aware that they are a-holes.
But don't give up! In the last sliver of the book you get to the magical land of Fillory. Which is Narnia. But not the beautiful, enchanted land of The Lion, the Which, and the Wardrobe. No, Fillory is the "adult" version. Which means its not a very nice place. Everything tries to kill you. Or have sex with you. And the centaurs keep a paddock of regular horses for rape-y sex. Weeeee!
So the a-holes you don't like go to a magical land you'd never want to visit.
But then that's the point of the long exposition on how amoral and broken the protagonists of this piece are: if you liked or cared about them you would feel sorry for them. But the entirety of the novel up until they get to Fillory establishes the many, many reasons you don't like them and you pretty much wish the bunnies would just murder them and get it over with.
Blah blah. They win. But at great cost. And you don't care. Because they are unlikable.
And Quentin. the intrepid hero, decides that magic is dumb and the source of all his problems. So he gives it up.
But wait! In a moment pulled right out of the end of Back to the Future, Quentin's a-hole friends show up - plus the girl who didn't make it into magic school because she wasn't magical enough but now suddenly is magical - to pull Quentin back into the world of magic so that there can be another book.
Which I will not be reading.
The TV show has to better, right? Only now I've taken it off my Netflix queue because I am certain they devote a lot of screen time to Welters.
Meh.
Spoiler
Meh. Take the wonder out of Hogwarts (or really any school of magic you've ever read about) and replace it with alcoholism and ennui and petty cruelty and you get Brakebills College for Magical Pedagogy, where magic is tedious, boring, and always unfulfilling. Even the bits where you "accidentally" get your classmates murdered. And also Welters. You get Welters. Which sounds like a game I would never want to watch let alone play. Apparently wizard games have to be dumb.
All this alcohol consumption and boredom and mean-spiritedness and Welters is described in painful detail, in a meandering, wandering, pointless sort of way. It wanders. Oh yes it wanders. And at some point you realise you are reading about those people at your school or your work that you don't like because they are all just a-holes. They aren't sophisticated or clever or interesting, but they pretend to be because they are all too aware that they are a-holes.
But don't give up! In the last sliver of the book you get to the magical land of Fillory. Which is Narnia. But not the beautiful, enchanted land of The Lion, the Which, and the Wardrobe. No, Fillory is the "adult" version. Which means its not a very nice place. Everything tries to kill you. Or have sex with you. And the centaurs keep a paddock of regular horses for rape-y sex. Weeeee!
So the a-holes you don't like go to a magical land you'd never want to visit.
But then that's the point of the long exposition on how amoral and broken the protagonists of this piece are: if you liked or cared about them you would feel sorry for them. But the entirety of the novel up until they get to Fillory establishes the many, many reasons you don't like them and you pretty much wish the bunnies would just murder them and get it over with.
Blah blah. They win. But at great cost. And you don't care. Because they are unlikable.
And Quentin. the intrepid hero, decides that magic is dumb and the source of all his problems. So he gives it up.
But wait! In a moment pulled right out of the end of Back to the Future, Quentin's a-hole friends show up - plus the girl who didn't make it into magic school because she wasn't magical enough but now suddenly is magical - to pull Quentin back into the world of magic so that there can be another book.
Which I will not be reading.
The TV show has to better, right? Only now I've taken it off my Netflix queue because I am certain they devote a lot of screen time to Welters.
Meh.