Synopsis: Earth-trained wizard Quentin is back in Fillory, the Narnia-clone fantasy-turned-reality world he always wanted to be part of. Something is off with the world of magic, though, and a routine tax-collecting sea voyage ends up turning into an epic worlds-spanning adventure--and magic itself hangs in the balance.
Review: The Magician King shed most of the flaws of its predecessor, The Magicians. My main complaints for the first book were the jerky pacing and the unrelatability of the main characters, most especially Quentin. For all of Quentin's shortcomings in this book, at his core he is the common man. He is no longer so deeply defined by misery, though he is still in search of meaning and depth. He is still keen on adventure and heroism as a means to find purpose. All of his magical studies actually come in handy instead of being discarded as soon as conflict arises. And he actually learns from what happens to him and around him. He grows. It's a great thing.
The pacing was WAY better this time around, though it still could have been improved upon. I know the reasoning for bouncing back and forth between events as they are happening in the storyline and Julia's flashbacks, and it was important that the Julia revelations came slowly throughout the plot, but it was still a bit awkward at times to jump between such disparate perspectives and timelines.
Some of the secondary characters were either needless or caricatures of their first-book-selves, which was sad but not terrible.
Everything that the book did right it did really right. The core conflict was mysterious and huge, and was revealed bit by bit, brilliantly. The fantasy was fantastical, the mythology rich. The vocabulary was varied, interesting, and pointedly precise. The ending was daring, wrenching, and tied things up nicely while leaving everything wide open for the finale. I can't wait for the last book to come out. 5 stars.
Friday, April 11, 2014
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