Hello friends, welcome to your last book club discussion before the relaunch (details coming soon). It’s me, your host, Merrin. Following this short review of my impressions of the book, feel free to discuss your takes in the comments!
The Magicians (2009)
Written by: Lev Grossman
Genre: Fantasy
Pages: 416 (Hardcover)
Publisher: Viking
Premise:
In a secret world of forbidden knowledge, power comes at a terrible price…Quentin Coldwater’s life is changed forever by an apparently chance encounter: when he turns up for his entrance interview to Princeton he finds his interviewer dead — but a strange envelope bearing Quentin’s name leads him down a very different path to any he’d ever imagined. The envelope, and the mysterious manuscript it contains, leads to a secret world of obsession and privilege, a world of freedom and power and, for a while, it’s a world that seems to answer all Quentin’s desires. But the idyll cannot last — and when it’s finally shattered, Quentin is drawn into something darker and far more dangerous than anything he could ever have expected…
Spoilers to follow, of course
Discussion: This book was first described to me as “Harry Potter for college students” and while that isn’t bad as introductions go, it isn’t really terribly accurate as you dig in. When I think about Harry Potter I think about a section of Eddie Izzard’s Dressed to Kill stand up, where he talks about realistic expectations that British kids have about what they want to be when they grow up.
“I want to go to outer space and be an explorer!” “Look, you’re British, scale it back.”
Harry Potter always seemed to me to be a normal, well-meaning kid who tried his best and ended up relying on the best efforts of the more talented people around him for success.
Quentin Coldwater feels quintessentially American. And not only American, but white male American. If Quentin Coldwater were on an American college campus, he’d be that guy from the meme sitting at a table with a shit opinion on a white poster board with the words “change my mind” at the bottom.
Hello @TCU. Come one come all. #ChangeMyMind pic.twitter.com/r4U4WaFFtm
— Steven Crowder (@scrowder) February 16, 2018
Quentin’s a pretty unapologetic asshole pretty much the whole way through. He’s not quite an anti-hero, but he’s certainly someone that I found difficult to like much at all. It’s not necessary that I like every character I read about, obviously, but it definitely helps to like the main character of a novel at least a little bit.
He spends so much of the novel not even giving a crap about the consequences of his actions that it’s almost amazing. He’s also so disaffected that things that should interest him, like the physics of how magic works, seem so uninteresting to him as he moves along. If the characters don’t give a shit then Lev Grossman doesn’t have to write it, I guess, but that’s kind of cheating if you ask me.
I know this sounds like I hated the book, but I didn’t really. I just don’t like Quentin. There were certainly interesting parts, like when they all turned to birds, when Fillory turned out to be real, when they found out who’d been behind the whole thing. It’s just easier to rant about thing things I don’t like.
But what did y’all think?
I thought Quentin was the whiniest white boy since Holden Canfield, and that it would be better blurbed as “magical catcher in the rye”. It definitely follows a very American private school elite mythos. But I really couldn’t stand book Quentin. This is one of very few things that I think is better on TV. (Mainly because less Quentin, more Margot.8
I honestly loved this trilogy.
Yes, Quentin is a self absorbed asshole and a whiny kid – but I also feel like he’s “real”.
He’s in college, he is absorbed in his feels, and needs to get his stuff together.
I think he does become better in the second book.
I really like the world Grossman built, especially because it’s not HP where everyone is rooting to do the good thing (in a very roundabout way).
My review of this trilogy is to skip the trilogy and watching the amazing television show instead. It fixes a significant number of the issues I had with the books.
OMG I finally finished reading it! I swear, if it hadn’t been for the fact I’d seen season one of the tv show, I’m pretty sure I would’ve thrown the book across the room after Quentin gets a standing ovation during his testing period. Because I was like, SERIOUSLY?!?!!? (let’s not mention that everything else being equal and you put a girl in Quentin’s place, all we’d hear about from people is “Mary Sue this, Mary Sue that” after that scene.
To be fair, what starts out as a Gary Stu in this case doesn’t really pan out in the way you’d expect. And like you, I don’t expect all characters to be likable, but if I wanted to read about self-absorbed douches, all I need to do is go to Twitter. Your Change My Mind guy comparison is RIGHT ON. Oh, and Quentin’s inner thoughts on women were so sexist that I really, really wish the author had given us other POVs so that we could see the author write non sexist-characters. Maybe that happens in later books?
Getting off my soapbox, I do wonder how much having seen at least the first season affected my reading of the book from a structural level. The Harry Potter comparisons are apt in that this book doesn’t really have a plot so much as it has a bunch of stuff HAPPENING and then there’s a BIG THING and that’s the end. This was true of the early Harry Potter books especially, but even they seemed to have more cause and effect cohesion (though maybe I’m biased being more familiar with that materiel).
Anyway, I got through this because I’ve wanted to do so ever since I saw the first season, and this club was a great push to do so. That said, I was leery of this book before the show ever came out, and after reading it, I feel I was right in being leery. I’m still inclined to go back to the show, because I keep hearing it does better than the books, but I’m not convinced the later books are going to be worth it.