The Magicians: A Novel [Hardcover]

Lev Grossman (Author)

Book Description

Release date: August 11, 2009

The New York Times bestselling novel about a young man practicing magic in the real world

Like everyone else, precocious high school senior Quentin Coldwater assumes that magic isn't real, until he finds himself admitted to a very secretive and exclusive college of magic in upstate New York. There he indulges in joys of college-friendship, love, sex, and booze- and receives a rigorous education in modern sorcery. But magic doesn't bring the happiness and adventure Quentin thought it would. After graduation, he and his friends stumble upon a secret that sets them on a remarkable journey that may just fulfill Quentin's yearning. But their journey turns out to be darker and more dangerous than they'd imagined. Psychologically piercing and dazzlingly inventive, The Magicians is an enthralling coming-of-age tale about magic practiced in the real world-where good and evil aren't black and white, and power comes at a terrible price.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Amazon Best of the Month, August 2009: Mixing the magic of beloved children's fantasy classics (from Narnia and Oz to Harry Potter and Earthsea) with the sex, excess, angst, and anticlimax of life in college and beyond, Lev Grossman's Magicians reimagines modern-day fantasy for grownups. Quentin Coldwater lives in a state of perpetual melancholy, privately obsessed with his childhood books about the enchanted land of Fillory. When he’s admitted to the surreptitious Brakebills Academy for an education in magic, Quentin finds mastering spells is tedious (and love is even more fraught). He also discovers his power has thrilling potential--though it's unclear what he should do with it once he's moved with his new magician cohorts to New York City. Then they discover the magical land of Fillory is real and launch an expedition to use their powers to set things right in the kingdom--which, naturally, turns out to be a much murkier proposition than expected. The Magicians breathes life into a cast of characters you want to know--if the people you want to know are charismatic, brilliant, complex, flawed magicians--and does what Quentin claims books never really manage to do: "get you out, really out, of where you were and into somewhere better. " Or if not better, at least a heck of a lot more interesting. --Mari Malcolm

From Publishers Weekly

Harry Potter discovers Narnia is real in this derivative fantasy thriller from Time book critic Grossman (Codex). Quentin Coldwater, a Brooklyn high school student devoted to a children's series set in the Narnia-like world of Fillory, is leading an aimless existence until he's tapped to enter a mysterious portal that leads to Brakebills College, an exclusive academy where he's taught magic. Coldwater, whose special gifts enable him to skip grades, finds his family's world mundane and domestic when he returns home for vacation. He loses his innocence after a prank unintentionally allows a powerful evil force known only as the Beast to enter the college and wreak havoc. Eventually, Coldwater's powers are put to the test when he learns that Fillory is a real place and how he can journey there. Genre fans will easily pick up the many nods to J.K. Rowling and C.S. Lewis, not to mention J.R.R. Tolkien in the climactic battle between the bad guy and a magician. 5-city author tour.(Aug.)
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Product Details

• Hardcover: 416 pages
• Publisher: Viking Adult; 1 edition (August 11, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0670020559
• ISBN-13: 978-0670020553
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.4 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (735 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #225,111 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Lev Grossman is the author of the New York Times bestselling novels The Magicians and The Magician King. The New Yorker named The Magicians as one of the best books of 2009. In 2011 Grossman was awarded the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer by the World Science Fiction Society.

Grossman is also the book critic at Time magazine, and he has written about books and technology for the New York Times, Salon, the Wall Street Journal, Wired, Lingua Franca, the Village Voice and the Believer, as well as NPR.

He lives in Brooklyn with his wife and three children. He's 43, slightly built and probably wouldn't last long in a post-apocalyptic, eye-for-an-eye world.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

643 of 739 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Wondrous -- but you still want to smack that idjit. July 1, 2009

By Theoden Humphrey VINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Vine™ Review (What's this?)

Stop thinking this is a fantasy book. I know, I know, it's called "The Magicians," the plot synopsis references all three of the most famous fantasy series and describes a handful of familiar fantasy tropes, including the school of magic and the fairy tale land come to actual life. But forget all of that. I have read more fantasy books than I can remember -- I'm named for a character in perhaps the most famous fantasy series of all time -- and I'm telling you: "The Magicians" is not a fantasy.

It has fantastic elements, yes. There is magic; there is a school for magic, where the characters learn to cast spells, using hand gestures and arcane language and strange mystical components -- Ziploc bag full of mutton fat, anyone? -- and there is a voyage from this world to another, a land of naiads and fauns and magical speaking animals, gods and demons, kings and queens, quests and wishes. But this book is something very different from the usual fantasy novel. In "The Magicians," Lev Grossman has done something unusual, and remarkable, perhaps even unique: this is a grown-up fantasy. This book is to fantasy what "The Grapes of Wrath" is to travel books, what "The Metamorphosis" is to self-help: so much more depressing and visceral and funny and horrifying, and genuine, and fascinating, and hard to read and therefore valuable, that it doesn't belong in the same category despite sharing some central traits. The setting is imagined, and there are supernatural things that happen, but make no mistake: this is a serious novel....

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. Where most fantasy books provide an escape from our reality, this book does not. In point of fact, the moral of this book is that escape is not only impossible, but dangerous and harmful to attempt. The hero, Quentin Coldwater, attempts to escape every serious situation he faces, and every time, he ends up worse off than he would have been if he had just been able to deal with it, honestly and sincerely. But his response to his worsened circumstances is to try to escape again -- with predictable results. Every step Quentin takes is the wrong one, and every step sinks him deeper and deeper into a quagmire. The book gets hard to read: not because the writing is anything less than excellent, as it is top notch from first page to last, but because the urge to reach into the page and slap, shake, and eventually throttle the main character becomes overwhelming. But that desire, that feeling, should be familiar to every adult who has thought back on his or her life, and shook his or her head, thinking, "Why did I do that? How could I be that stupid?" That desire to smack Quentin is no different from the desire to smack our younger selves, and sometimes, that's a terribly annoying feeling to have, which makes this a somewhat annoying book to read.

The real triumph of this book, however, is that it is not only a serious novel, despite what I have been saying. Grossman is able to describe a world of wonder and imagination, and populate it with characters who are utterly unworthy of the magic all around them, who appreciate nothing, who completely flub their great chance -- just like I would have done if I lived through this experience, just as most of us do with our great chances in our real, mundane, unfantastic lives, which are also as full of wonder as any dreamed by a teller of tales. And because the characters are so real, so easy to relate to, it makes the fantasy seem just as real (which, of course, makes the real world just as fantastic). Brakebills reminded me of my own college experience, and yet it is a magical place. Fillory is indeed a fairy tale land come to life in this book, and I found myself wishing that I could believe I would have handled Fillory better than Quentin does -- but knowing that I would have done almost precisely the same things, made the same choices and the same mistakes. And the ending is glorious: the climactic action scene is thrilling and impossible to put down; the revealed secrets are both surprising and satisfying; the final resolution is, if not completely happy, at least hopeful.

I won't say that this is a great book, on par with "Of Mice and Men" and "Catcher in the Rye" and "To Kill a Mockingbird," but I will say that it is closer to those than it is to "The Hobbit" or the Xanth books. If you are a fan of literature, of thinking about your reading, then you must get this book, especially if you enjoy fantasy. If you are just looking for an escape, look elsewhere -- because this is not a fantasy. Or at least, it isn't only a fantasy. It's a wonder. Read more ›

356 of 418 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars Well written book, but it left me Numb July 24, 2009

By Mitchell M. Tse VINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Vine™ Review (What's this?)

The Magicians by Lev Grossman 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. And that, really, is why I left this review with 3 stars. 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.

Would I recommend this book to someone else? Honestly, I'm not sure, and that's why I must conclude with 3 stars.

I'm interested in discussing this story with anyone else who is willing to, without putting any spoilers into play, so I'll do that via comments to my own review. Feel free to join in. Read more ›

142 of 175 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars The Neverending Chronicles Of Hogwarts Wardrobe July 23, 2009

By Crystal Lily VINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Vine™ Review (What's this?)

Ok right off the bat you get the distinct impression you've read all of this before.

Boy feels socially akward...boy discovers he's magical...boy gets into private magical school.

So right away you feel...wow that's very Harry Potter of you. Yet somehow it's not bad and the author even at times makes fun of this very obvious fact by referencing Rowlings work. I thought the book would feel stale, and oddly I found just the opposite. The differences are slight but they are there. Here it's college, the student body is much smaller and the quirkiness of the world is much more subdued.

Now the other obvious work at play here is C.S. Lewis and his Narnia books...except here it's called Fillory. But the rest is almost exactly the same. Childrens books written long ago where the young Chatwin siblings find themselves falling into a magical realm through a grandfather clock. Talking animals and all. Right down to the need for human Kings and Queens and the set of 4 thrones. ANd while for the majority of the book these tales remain as such...tales which our antagonist holds quite dear...the last quarter of the book finds a more real version which, while still resembling the childrens tales, ends up being far more sinister in actuality.
And for good measure I seemed to feel a dash of Neverending Story thrown in. The books he's been reading aren't fiction!

Now all that being said and all the painfully obvious similarities aside, I found an astonishing thing happen once I stopped thinking about those facts. I found that even though these ideas were recycled the author does manage to bring a fresh take on them. I enjoyed reading this book immensely and I really didn't expect that.... He writes succinctly and manages to encompass a great span of time and events while still leaving the reader feeling as if nothing were left out. And maybe there's a bit of that "comfort food" mindset at play here. But it didn't matter while I was reading it. I was genuinely curious where the story was headed and I was engaged with the characters straight on through.
I would recommend this to anyone who enjoys fantasy books and those with a bit of a yearning for old childhood classics minus the childishness. Read more ›