book review: lev grossman - the magicians

Synopsis: Brilliant, socially-awkward and ever-miserable Quentin wants more than his humdrum Brooklyn life, and seems to get it when he suddenly tests into a mysterious magical boarding school in upstate New York. He studies (and gets very, very drunk very, very often) for four years, a period intermixed with minor and major hijinks. For some reason, even in a magical world, he still finds himself miserable. Then he graduates and tries to live life to its fullest, only to find that he's still miserable. So when he realizes that (spoiler, though it's heavily foreshadowed and patently obvious from about page 5) his favorite fictional fantasyland is real, he jumps at the opportunity to have an adventure and throw off the shackles of his own emotions, only to find that perhaps it isn't everything around him that's keeping him miserable.

Review: So I enjoyed The Magicians. I really did. It's just that I had such higher hopes for it. The third book in the series comes out this year, and this one sped to the top of my to-read list based on this recommendation from BuzzFeed: "If Sanderson’s Words of Radiance may be the most anticipated work of “high” fantasy this year, then Lev Grossman’s The Magician's Land may be the most anticipated work of fantasy to be released in the last 25 years period, full stop." So I expected the writing to be on par with Sanderson or perhaps Patrick Rothfuss.

It is not.

Don't get me wrong, I definitely enjoyed the book. The premise is interesting, and I loved the precision and intelligence required of magicians in the Magicians universe. Grossman also worked in some great vocabulary, and not in a forced, I-right-clicked-and-checked-the-thesaurus kind of way. I like learning new words, and the words he chose often turned out to be the most succinct and accurate words for what was being portrayed. That was refreshing.

The pacing was just so terrible. Like, really terrible. A belabored point here and there, and then the reader chances to blink and an entire year has elapsed. I think the author couldn't decide how important the Brakebills time was supposed to be. It formed the foundation for the readers' understanding of how magic works, and it introduced the characters to each other and had them form bonds, but everything was pointing to Fillory from early on, and we don't really start to scratch the surface of that [SPOILER]other than, let's be honest, the obvious fact that the paramedic was the Watcherwoman. We just didn't know what that meant.[/SPOILER] until like 70% of the way through the book. Either more had to happen in Brakebills for it to be worth all that time (maybe even its own book and teasing the Fillory bits for the next), or less had to happen so we could get up and get going with things. Let's be honest, too, all of that studying didn't get them very far when push came to shove. All that studying and they couldn't calculate anything because they didn't know the Circumstances. And then they magically (harhar) figure out their battle magic that they had strewn together pretty much last-minute in their final moment of panic-induced fervor? I don't buy it.

I know the point wasn't necessarily Fillory, it was more what's in Quentin's stupid head (the stupidhead), but still. I didn't feel like the book ever settled into a comfortable rhythm.

Then there's Quentin, the anti-hero. We get it. He's unhappy. We get it, he's drunk. We get it, he doesn't think he deserves all of this. We get it, he doesn't like himself. Can we move on yet? The author went to such lengths to point out Quentin's flaws and disdain for himself that I never really grew to like him, or even to relate to him. That's not a good sign in a protagonist. He waffles so much. [POSSIBLY BIGGER SPOILER SINCE IT'S FROM THE END]And what was up with the super-intense studying that led to deciding to do nothing there at the end of the book? The author realized if he was going to introduce super-Janet, super-Eliot, and super-Julia at the end that Quentin had to be up to par somehow? Weak sauce.[/POSSIBLY BIGGER SPOILER]

So while I enjoyed the book, I was frustrated with it. I hope the sequel is better written or better edited. There was so much that could have gone right, and still can.

3 or 3.5 stars--enjoyable and fun, but flawed.