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The Magicians
The protagonist, Quentin Coldwater, is a nerd. He's an academic over-achiever living a life of privilege, set on a path of success. He's also extremely unhappy, feeling disconnected from the rest of the world. He struggles with his inability to connect with others and the meaninglessness of life. He has sought out and found some respite in the fantasy world of Fillory, a magical land created and explored in the books of an American author that lived in England. At the start of The Magicians Quentin in on his way to an interview as part of the admissions process for Princeton. But this does not end up as another normal day for Quentin. Rather than his ultimate destination, Princeton, Quentin ends up at Brakebills. Brakebills is a university in upstate New York where students learn magic.
While Hogwarts was not the first literary school of magic, it is the model Grossman has in mind and he is very up front about that fact. The students take part in a magical game called Welters. At one point a team member of Quentin's, Josh, is absent at the start of a match. Quentin hunts him down and the following interaction takes place between the two of them.
Josh stood up. He saluted smartly. "Send me an owl."
"Come on, they're waiting for us. Fogg is freezing his ass off."
"Good for him. Too much ass on that man anyway."
Quentin got Josh out of the library and heading toward the rear of the House, though he was moving slowly with a worrying tendency to lurch into door frames and occasionally into Quentin.
He did an abrupt about-face.
"Hang on," he said. "Gotta get my quidditch costume. I mean uniform. I mean welters."
"We don't have uniforms."
"I know that, " Josh snapped. "I'm drunk, I'm not delusional. I still need my winter coat."
This sliver does a lot to reveal the similarities and differences. Brakebills is very much like Hogwarts in external ways, and completely different in substance. The school is for adults, not children and the life that Grossman portrays is much more in line with reality than fantasy. This is not a book to pick up for a young child. This story contains profanity, sexual content, graphic violence, as well as alcohol and drug abuse. This is where I ran into my first issue with The Magicians. I'll get to that shortly, but first I'd like to finish laying out what the book involves.
Not all of Brakebills is lifted straight from Hogwarts, though I don't think the reader with much experience in reading fantasy will find anything that could really be called new. What there is, as I have mentioned, is very well done. Grossman builds up to moments of palpable tension. He pulls the reader into the life of Quentin and shows real finesse at times. His characters very much come alive, in their brief moments of joy and in their many moments of pain, frustration and loss. Anyone who has felt the hurt of being outside, dealing with the cruelty of others or a general questioning of meaning will be able to relate well to the protagonist.
Eventually school is over and the students graduate. And here is the turn that I think the promotional material makes obvious but some may not want to know about going into reading the book. The second section of the story begins as Quentin and his fellow Brakebills alumni find out that Fillory is real. They immediately prepare to set out on an expedition to the land they've loved since childhood. That Fillory is better spelled N-a-r-n-i-a is just as obvious as the connection to Rowling's work. Quentin and company enter Fillory using magic buttons that take them to an intermediary world of fountains. Jumping into each fountain takes a person to a different world. They have to take care to jump into the correct pool at the base of the fountain that will take them to Fillory. Fillory is a land of talking beasts and magical creatures.
So what sets The Magicians apart from lesser books that lift heavily from other works? Why is The Magicians a strong story while something like Eragon is a weak rip-off? I think it boils down to two elements. First is Grossman's strong writing. Even if this were just a big piece of fan fiction, it would be well written fan fiction. Secondly, this isn't just an homage to the work of others. While Grossman has lifted the settings and externals, the substance is completely different often to the point of taking a position that is completely antithetical to the original work.
My first problem, which I tie to the very adult content is wrapped up in why I read fantasy. I read fantasy on many levels as a form of escape, much like Grossman's character Quentin did. Much of the fantasy I've read is not only fantasy but it is written for children. At the bottom of it all there is no real risk or fear. I read with anticipation, not of an outcome but rather how that outcome will be worked out by the author. There is often death or treachery but it takes on a fairy tale like quality. It does not feel real or cruel but rather cartoonish. Grossman completely jettisons any of this kind of approach. He tackles the safety of these children's tales and eviscerates it. The violence in The Magicians is not cartoonish, it is often cruel even sadistic. There's not much in the way of escapism here. What Quentin finds is that magic doesn't change the basic underlying facts of life, not even traveling to another world does this. This is combined with the fact that much of Grossman's realism includes behavior and speech that isn't something that I would consider normal or appropriate. It may be for others but this isn't a book I would feel comfortable recommending to friends or family.
Then there is my second issue. I've read that Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy is intended to be a type of anti-Narnia. Well Grossman doesn't just create an alternative world that is contrary to Narnia. He destroys Narnia from the inside. And this caused issues for me in both sections of the book at times. Not because of ideological difficulties with what Grossman puts forward but because it would frequently push me outside the story as it felt like Grossman would move from telling his own story to commenting on the story of another. It isn't that what he has to say about the other stories isn't interesting and that he doesn't bring up intriguing issues and criticisms of both, but rather that it jarred me out of the narrative as the story became more a work of exposition. Something like the flashbacks to History and Moral Philosophy class that fill so much of Starship Troopers. The author shows his hand, that he is more interested in making a point than telling a story.
The fact that a major component of the book is polemic in nature means much of the discussion around the book will not be about plot or setting but rather about the argument the author sets forth. I don't agree with Grossman's premise or conclusions but I do admire how well he states his case throughout the entire book, not only in those portions that might feel a bit preachy. I've read in an interview Grossman did about The Magicians that he feels that Rowling lets her characters solve their problems, rather than resting on divine intervention like the characters of Lewis's works. This is reflected in how he handles the world of each, though I would argue that this is not the case, especially in light of how Rowling's series ended. I think it does explain why he is so much rougher on Lewis.
Anyone looking for a dark story that questions the assumptions and underlying principles of those that are not so dark should really enjoy this book. Any parent that picks it up for their young one because they hear it compared to Harry Potter is in for a rude surprise. Those looking for a fun little escape from the real world wont find it here, though things are so grim at times they may find the real world a bit of a relief after the weight of Grossman's. The Magicians held my attention and I was impressed with Grossman's ability, unfortunately at the same time I was a bit disappointed with how he used that ability. With something this subjective your mileage may vary, and since release The Magicians has hit number nine on the New York Times best sellers list.
Viking set up a number of web sites to support the release of The Magicians. This is not so much about the book itself but will be of interest to readers and I think is an interesting development for book lovers in general. There are four sites TheMagiciansBook.com is a normal promotional site with information on the book. ChristopherPlover.com brings to life the fictional author of the Fillory books. Brakebills of course has a site, obfuscated just like the school itself. Finally there is Embers Tomb a wealth of Fillory related information. The Fillory and Plover sites come across as very genuine and will probably snag a reader or two into some level of confusion. The Brakebills site is a bit too over the top to be taken seriously but then again, with real news sites quoting The Onion and the occasional uproar I see over humor sites like Objective Ministries there probably will be some who think it is a real school.
You can purchase The Magicians from amazon.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
Harry Potter is a clumsy metaphor for Jesus, and ... anything else?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
But what I really want to know is... what kind of sex am I going to find in it? This review is lousy at covering the important points. If I buy the book, am I going to get Narina-furry sex? Hogwarts-magic sex? These are the things I need to know.
So it blends. But does it run Linux?
Tic-Tac-Toe, Global Thermonuclear War, and relationships all have the same winning move.
Magician blendS YOU!
Yours In Akademgorodok,
K. Trout
It is a well written story about a magical world, a fairly detailed world of rules and exceptions. The story, at one point, had a very poignant concept of what magic may be: That if the universe was a house that God made for everyone, that Magic was the tools he left behind, possibly by accident, in the garage. That perhaps using Magic was as dangerous as kids finding these power tools and such, and using them without direction or precaution.
The characters in the story are fairly fleshed out, in that you have a good sense of what drives them, what makes them tick, you can see the dynamics between them. The description of the magic school Brakebills is very well done, filled with things that people don't understand about and that has a life of its own. And while at the very end there's something that can lead to a sequel, there's definitely an ending to this book, no gimmick cliffhanger that requires you to wait for the next book.
Definitely, the book had the makings of a great story. Yet, I was left numb at the end, not happy, not sad, not scared. I read fiction to be entertained. This entertainment can be in the form of humor, feeling good, scared, excited, titillated, insightful, or some combination thereof. Instead, when I read this book, I saw through the eyes of a fairly apathetic protagonist, who messes things up and blames everyone else, who had chances to become a hero and fails each time. I read about a person who wanted something, got it, didn't like it, and became apathetic. I read about the antagonist being defeated, the protagonist winning in the end, and no one feeling ... well, happy for having accomplished anything. Perhaps this is what real life can be. But come on, that's not entertainment. And that's what's sad about this, that this book had the potential to be a GREAT story, but misses the mark significantly.
I don't think it's indicative of people wanting to mash things together, so much as finding it amusing when someone sticks every day objects (and sometimes expensive ones) into a blender and records the destruction that ensues.
Sames as the guys on youtube who stick shit in microwaves for extended periods of time to see what happens. It's purely the destructive impulse being satisfied.
Who reads fantasy for 'gritty realism'? Sounds like it'd just be a major drag, to me. And deliberately basing your school on another magic school in a recent book? Isn't that just a cop-out?
"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." - DM
Instead, when I read this book, I saw through the eyes of a fairly apathetic protagonist, who messes things up and blames everyone else, who had chances to become a hero and fails each time.
Would you say there's a similarity between this character and Donaldson's Thomas Covenant?
While Covenant doesn't fail *every* time, it was the extreme unlikeability of the character that put me off and made finishing the novel a chore. I didn't even care all that much whether he learned to overcome that character, and at most I was vaguely worried about whether he was going to die in the real world or not.
Unless someone knows something I don't about this post it shouldn't be modded down. This is pretty insightful and the author obviously has read and given thought to the content of the book.
It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
What I find distressing is not the book itself (I haven't read it), but the hype emerging from the publishing industry about it. After the stunning and unexpected success of Harry Potter, the publishers had two choices -- either keep a look out for books that might have the same appeal, or only look for books that revolve around the exact same formula of young people in a boarding school with fantasy trappings. It seems that they've chosen the latter. Harry Potter may spawn a raft of imitators, and although each may put their own spin on the formula (like The Magicians has), they're still going to be different cookies from the same cutter.
I wonder if 'fantasy boarding school fiction' will soon become a genre of its own?
Genocide Man -- Life is funny. Death is funnier. Mass murder can be hilarious.
>Where the characters in most fantasy books are heroic, larger than life, the sort of people we wish we could be, these magicians are not: the characters are too close to plain old humanity, flawed, contradictory, foolish and foolhardy, to stand in as idealized versions of ourselves.
Reminds me of "District 9", which several friends panned due to the main character being too 'unsympathetic'. If they wanted an action movie, they could track supporting character Christopher's arc. Whereas the point of '9' seemed to be that the main character was an ordinary, flawed person stuck in an action scenario.
That kind of thing may ruin the escapism value, but it makes for a great story.
A.
Unless someone knows something I don't about this post it shouldn't be modded down. This is pretty insightful and the author obviously has read and given thought to the content of the book.
Because it's a copy/paste from Amazon's reviews and this "Smidge" character is not only a well known troll but he has done this before? In the course of his lies, he continues to claim to be multiple different reviewers on Amazon. Frankly, he is stealing other reviewer's credit and should be modded down, not up.
My work here is dung.
Ah - so there we have it. Thanks for the info.
It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
C.S. Lewis was out to make a point and tell a story. So was Tolkien. In contrast Potter seems to be "just a story" without an underlying point. This has no bearing on the merits but rather the structure and origin.
It struck me that Both Lewis and Tolkien (as well as Herbert for you Sci-Fi fans) sat down and said, "What message do I want to send... okay.. now how about a good story to communicate that..."
Potter struck me as, "Ok here is the overall story. Let's see if we can work a bigger message into it."
As the review pointed out sometimes the story can get overshadowed by the message\point the author is trying to make.
People, for some odd reason alawsys have an axe to grind with Lewis. Be it Christan bigotry or the exact opposite, alas the "Jesus isn't an animal!" rabid foaming at the mouth fundamentalists I find it almost ironic that Rowling, Tolkien, and Lewis now form this weird "Fantasy Trinity" of core writers.
Interestingly enough though I hear little of Ann Mcaffrey, Margret Weis and Tracy Hickman; and albiet biased, Terry Brooks.
It goes back to world crafting which is difficult to do, for authors even more so do to limited space.
Perhaps the success of those three was their ability, intentional or otherwise, was to draw the reader into the world with little effort.
Perhaps we should measure this work against that standard on how easily "we can step through the wardrobe", or quickly "we can make the journey to the undying lands", or how siftly we can "catch a train to Hogwarts"
-=[ Who Is John Galt? ]=-
Wow, how original, a mishmash of two very tired metaphors er I mean stories er I mean allegories er well doesn't anyone actually want to do something original?
Why bother
I met Lev at Comicon this year, and talked with him briefly. He led a panel which covered, among other topics, Harry Potter and the impact it had on the fantasy genre. The Magicians is pretty upfront about borrowing from Harry Potter, with the students sarcastically saying, "Let's go put on our Quidditch Robes" when they are dragged outside to play the magical game that they all hate.
Essentially, it's a re-take on the entire notion of a magical sub-culture in our world, with a lot more "realism" (if that's the right word) instilled. There's no big bad. Wizards are by and large angsty, unmotivated (they can get anything they want with a snap of their fingers) and emotionally stunted. The main character is a depressing anti-hero (not in the cool and dangerous antihero vibe, but is just a character you end up hating by the end of the book since he's the polar opposite of a hero, though not a villain, so to speak.)
I'd recommend this book to anyone who likes Harry Potter and Narnia, but is looking for a more adult take on it. That said, I'd probably just give it a B+, since I hate angsty teens, and they never really develop past that point.
Here's my Amazon review on it:
http://www.amazon.com/review/RPCO5K5YVAQ5I/ref=cm_cr_rdp_perm
Thanks for pointing that out. I should have read this before I moderated. Ah well, this comment will fix it.
I would really like to moderate this "-1, stupid and self-contradicting," but that's not an option, so I'll post anonymously and gripe about it.
It is a fantasy. Look the damn word up in a dictionary.
Saying "it can't be a fantasy because it's written for grown-ups" is a non-sequiter.
(and saying it's not a fantasy--in the first paragraph--and "this is a grown-up fantasy" in the second is rather a contradiction.)
Credit where it's due: This post was originally written for Amazon.com by Mitchell M. Tse of Antioch, CA.
Why did it have to be Narnia? Why couldn't it have been Discworld? Sigh...
From the blurb I was expecting something different...but then nothing in this review makes me want to read the book, in fact after getting all the way through to the end and seeing "New York Times best sellers list" just shows me how much of a inflated budget failure of writing this is. It's right up with the typical mass produced best seller garbage that comes out such as Anita Blake novels, where you have people who are excellent writers of written language, yet have no real creativity of their own and as a result resort to mimic the ideas of others or fill their books with enough sex to entice all the 12 year old boys into reading.
I hate garbage like this so much.
Thank you stoolpigeon for saving me from another bad read.
Ave Molech Setting
The popularity of web site Will It Blend? is indicative of how people enjoy mashing things together
What does Will It Blend have to do with mashing things together? They destroy stuff for a laugh - always a popular pastime for geeks, but nothing whatsoever to do with so-called mash-ups.
I felt so physically ill at the thought of combing C.S. Lewis's master piece with Rowling's ilk that I was actually relieved to find out it was a Harry Potter rip off written with the intent of bashing the Narnia series.
See also Lev Grossman's piece in the WSJ, Good Books Don't Have to be Hard:
Y'know,
Being a bestseller and all, is it obvious to no one but me that it's available at Borders, Barnes and Noble, Waldenbooks, and probably Kroger, as well as most independent bookstores in the American publishing zone?
What kind of crap is this "Available from Amazon?"
Pull your head out. It's available anywhere you buy
hardcover books. Are you paid to plug Amazon.com?
This article is hella-lame.
Visiting that Will It Bend website was a total waste of my time.
I want that time back!
This is a horrible review...7/10 for a book the reviewer automatically starts to rip off and call a pathetic harry potter ripoff? How bad does a book have to be to get a 6/10? A twilight ripoff perhaps? I don't disagree this book is complete crap, but to give it a 7/10?!? Reviews like this are indecitive of how crappy slashdot has been getting lately. At least their games section has at least regained some somblance of respectability since that tool who will remain nameless stopped posting.
Patrick Rothfuss, author of The Name of the Wind, recommended this book on his blog http://www.patrickrothfuss.com/blog/2009/08/things-i-like-magicians-and-faeries-of.html
Whereas the point of '9' seemed to be that the main character was an ordinary, flawed person stuck in an action scenario.
Really? I thought the whole point was to send a clear message that it's a bad idea to allow disgruntled nerdy civil servants to get their hands on a fully operational battlemech.
In other news, in Japan you can now rent exoskeletons.
I wonder what the civil servants in Japan are like...
People replying to my sig annoy me. That's why I change it all the time.
Well I have to admit, smashing Harry Potter and Narnia together would have been really cool and at first glance of what the story was about, I thought that this book would be really cool to check out, but after reading this review over it, this doesn't seem like the book for me. I am one of those readers that usually just reads for a nice escape so since this article warns over and over again that this isn't much of an escape i guess I'll have to pass it up. I do have to admit that the story line did seem really interesting, it's too bad that it's so grim. Not to mention i would hate to have to go through another Golden Compass, I mean honestly, why in the world would you want to tarnish Lewis's masterpiece. I don't know, I might check it out.
"Will it blend?" isn't about whether things will combine, it's about whether things will be reduced to a homogenous heap by the act of blending. Which may not be the sort of comparison the author intended.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
Why has this been modded troll? It's a well thought-out and well-written post (and has actually convinced me to give the book a try).
to see that the literary world has forgotten about Clive Barker. There is no mention of his works in this review at all and yet some of these descriptions perfectly match those of his books. You want a GREAT fantasy book with the grit of real life...Imajica or The Great and Secret Show...both of which I am positive are better than this book.