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lieslindi 's review for:
The Magicians: Alice's Story
by Pius Bak, Lev Grossman, Lilah Sturges
I loved it for the first 300 pages, to the point I repeatedly declared this was the best book ever, and then it went all sword-and-sorcery and spun out of control. I knew it had to go that way eventually but I had higher hopes for how Lev Grossman would treat it or how I would tolerate it. I tolerate fantasy a lot better in children's books than in adult ones and I had lost patience with the Narnian critters well before the Tolkien demon showed up. And the ending was unresolved in an unsatisfactory way -- I can handle books that don't give a happy ending with all threads raveled, but this just felt like a gaping sequel-ready hole that allowed the protagonist to avoid the honest, existential issues that had confronted him.
I loved it because it stole from Narnia and reminded me of Pamela Dean's Tam Lin (school, loving school, not wanting to leave school, the "anticipatory nostalgia" before graduation, all of which I empathize with) and Mysterious Benedict Society (the examination) and Earthsea (having to know the balance of magic and adjust it to the world) and Winter's Tale (the mysterious place in upstate New York) and Secret History (the cloistering of those who specialize in something arcane). I love that Harry Potter books existed in this world to be mocked (that spells consisted of more than messed up Latin, that something was going to arrive in a chariot pulled by a threstral, welters as quidditch). I love that Grossman had someone use a phrase from Infinite Jest (the "howling fantods"). I love that Quentin's reaction to humanity after leaving the centaurs was like Gulliver's upon leaving the Houyhnhnms.
Nitpicks: Almost all the prose was lovely and alliterative but occasionally it squinted or had proofreading errors: "It took Quentin a minute for his eyes to adjust," "inspite," and a piece of sentence that ran "[subject:] did a lot of for [object:]."
One bit where Grossman revealed himself to be a New Yorker's New Yorker was when the group was in the different upstate New York place, where they were within a day's easy out-and-back driving distance to Buffalo for errands yet east of the Adirondacks (they watched the sun set behind the mountains).
I loved it because it stole from Narnia and reminded me of Pamela Dean's Tam Lin (school, loving school, not wanting to leave school, the "anticipatory nostalgia" before graduation, all of which I empathize with) and Mysterious Benedict Society (the examination) and Earthsea (having to know the balance of magic and adjust it to the world) and Winter's Tale (the mysterious place in upstate New York) and Secret History (the cloistering of those who specialize in something arcane). I love that Harry Potter books existed in this world to be mocked (that spells consisted of more than messed up Latin, that something was going to arrive in a chariot pulled by a threstral, welters as quidditch). I love that Grossman had someone use a phrase from Infinite Jest (the "howling fantods"). I love that Quentin's reaction to humanity after leaving the centaurs was like Gulliver's upon leaving the Houyhnhnms.
Nitpicks: Almost all the prose was lovely and alliterative but occasionally it squinted or had proofreading errors: "It took Quentin a minute for his eyes to adjust," "inspite," and a piece of sentence that ran "[subject:] did a lot of for [object:]."
One bit where Grossman revealed himself to be a New Yorker's New Yorker was when the group was in the different upstate New York place, where they were within a day's easy out-and-back driving distance to Buffalo for errands yet east of the Adirondacks (they watched the sun set behind the mountains).