The Magicians

Title: The Magicians
Author: Lev Grossman
Genre: Fantasy
Source: eBook
Rating: 4 out of 5

Quentin is your typical high school student who loves a series of books call "Fillory and Further."  On the day he is supposed to have an interview for college, he enters to find his interviewer laying dead. As he walks in a daze he finds himself on the campus for a different school and takes an odd series of entrance exams for what he finds out later is for a school called Brakebills.  What is different about Brakebills is that it is a school for magic. Quentin finds out magic is a lot harder than he has anticipated.  During their third year, students find themselves separated into Disciplines and Quentin finds himself in with the Physical Kids even though he technically does not have a Discipline.  Upon graduation the students find themselves striving to find a purpose and stumble upon Fillory.  There they discover "The Beast" and find themselves in an epic battle for survival. After the fight Quentin's love Alice sacrifices herself to kill the Beast, Penny loses the use of his hands and an injured Quentin is under the care of some centaurs.  All the while Eliot and Janet become the king and queen of Fillory.

I had a little bit of a harder time getting into this one because I have seen the show on sci-fi, and while I know the show is nothing like the book there are some similarities and the expectations I had for some characters were skewed by how the show portrays them.  That being said, I did enjoy the book, there were many things that were different or portrayed differently.  Grossman took magic and gave it and adult feel, while i have read this book described as a very adult version of Harry Potter, I would say it is VASTLY different from that series and would not compare the two. Each book addresses magic differently.

Quentin was rather boring and difficult to like in the book, he came off as a dumbling fool who just kind of stumbled into magic.  Granted his character gets better as the novel progresses, but it's far easier to like other characters better such as Eliot or even Penny once he returns to the story.  Q didn't have much depth to him at first or even halfway through novel. The story itself seemed to drag on about the activities of school and the years the group spends there.  It isn't until book 2 which is a little over halfway through the novel that it begins to pick up and some action begins to happen.  It took a long time to build up to the ultimate battle and discovery of Fillory. 

It is defintely a novel that portrays wanting something badly, building a grand idea of it and never being able to fully reaching it or finding it and discovering the disappointment of it not being what you have built it up to be.  If you are going into this book thinking it will be a light and airy series, don't it is darker than expected.  Regardless it was a good read.  If you have seen the show, it may be difficult to read but still worth it.  I recommend it.