The Magicians: A Novel (Magicians Trilogy) Paperback – May 25, 2010

I have thought long and hard about what to say about this book. I began it after watching a some of the episodes of the TV show, and I'm sad to report this is one case where the show is far, far better than the book ever managed to be.

Objectively, there is little wrong with the book itself. The writing is, for the most part, decent, even if the author has the infuriating tendency to tell, not show. Yes, the pacing manages to be laborious, even when skipping months at a time, but other books have that problem and still manage to be decent.

The fundamental problem of this book is that nothing happens. At all. There's something to be said for a book exploring the life of the everyman, to whom nothing of import happens, instead of a mythic hero, but that's not what's going on here. Many things - wonderful things - happen to the main character, Q. He learns magic, travels to other worlds, falls in love but, throughout it all, he rejects them. Nothing is good enough for him. His magic isn't magical enough. His lover is boring. And so he continues to tell himself he's meant for something better, all he while failing to live up to what minor expectations are put on him at all.

There is no character growth. Q remains the whiny, entitled, depressed child he was at the beginning of the book, only with a whole host of new, wonderful things to go on about, at the end. He lauds himself for making such good choices and goes off and does the opposite for no adequately explored reason. He tells himself he's better than everyone and fails to see he's the least of them, even after encountering gods and genuinely decent people. If anything, he revels in the depression this causes him, almost to the point of glorifying untreated mental illness.

The characters with the most potential are hardly explored at all, with most appearing to be written out by the end of the book.

The "villain" - indeed, the overarching "plot" itself - seems like an afterthought, as if the author wrote a book about your average wizard and realized he needed an actual reason for someone to read it. Indeed, the author uses the "villain"'s appearance at the end of the novel as a chance to be preachy, going on about how getting what you want is awful because it always ends up badly, and how having emotions is terrible because you might get hurt, tacked on as if an afterthought.

None of this even begins to touch the magical worlds the author has built. Rather than being a "Hogwarts for adults", as advertised, we are given a magical college that somehow manages to be more dull than any real college ever attended, and people who are, to varying degrees, obsessed with a slightly less Christian allegory version of Narnia. Neither are flushed out to anything close to the degree Hogwarts (or Middle Earth or Narnia) was, so that instead of a "magical world that feels real" that could have possibly redeemed the rest of the book, we get a suggestion of a magical world as seen through fogged glasses from a distance.

In short, I have never encountered anything that was such a waste of time. I can't even bring myself to properly hate the book because there is nothing, fundamentally, to hate. It just is. And for that reason alone it becomes the new #1 on my "Books Never To Read Again And Keep The Rest Of The World From Reading At All Costs" list, above books I've outright loathed, because there is nothing to enjoy and even less to hate.

Plenty of people have called this book the "Harry Potter for adults" and I would agree with that. Lots of other reviewers have said that this book isn't "fantasy" and I would agree with that too. I think the best way to describe this book would be to say that it imagines a world in which magic is real and just like everything else in the real world, magic can be and often is hard, dirty, ugly and horrifying. If you are expecting a Harry Potter tale in which our hero fights the Dark Lord as a cute little, bright eyed first year you will be disappointed. The first two thirds of this book should be treated as a series of vignettes that are stories in themselves. It is easy to me to see how some readers get frustrated waiting for something to happen, I did. But don't quit. What I like about this book is that the author builds a world as if magic were real, as if it's something you have to work very, very hard at, and then he makes you, the reader feel how his character must feel. The "vignettes" are entertaining, some I liked better than others (you will too), but by turns you will be bored, listless, frustrated and when you look down to the bottom of your Kindle and see that you are 60% through the book you will feel much like the character does at that point in the tale: is this really all there is? Where is the adventure? Make no mistake, there is adventure, there is a plot but Grossman makes his characters and his readers earn it. Lastly, this is the beginning of a series and, seeing as I'm about three quarters through the second book, I like where this series is going, so stick it out, there is much more gritty and fun fantasy ahead. But, make no mistake, this Narnia isn't for kids.

I started reading The Magicians because I watched a few episodes of the Syfy show, based on the books, and enjoyed them very much. I'm very happy I did. This book series is the best I've read in a long time-- I'm currently reading book three.

The more I read, the more I realize that I rarely get swept into a story. This novel did just that. I read the first 70 pages in my first sitting, and finished the rest of the book in about a week. The book was filled with several complex and convincingly unique characters. It was filled with unexpected magical turns, and honest (sometimes beautiful, sometimes horrifying) developments. And I just really liked the colorful, engaging story -- filled with Beasts, missing children, mythic lands, love, finding one's place, loss, and finding community in friends.

I was very pleased to read that the book was not exactly like its namesake show on Syfy. Though I love the show, I hoped that I would get more insight into the characters, and see left out events, in the book, which I did (notably, a touching scene at Brakebills South). If one has come to this book because they've liked the show, then I'd recommend going for it, and buying the book. While the two, the show and book, are fairly different, they both share some pretty important and loveable attributes -- like the fumbling Quinton, lovely Alice, nasty Janet (Margo in the show), exuberant Eliot, the Fillory books, and lots in between.

Again, this was the best book I've read in quite a while.

This book reminded me a lot of Catcher In The Rye. It has a melancholy feel, but not depressing. There's a deep sense of understanding of today's world and the ways in which it can feel mundane sometimes.

Still there's creative magic and plenty of action throughout the book. The characters are unique and well-developed. They're not overly fantastical characters, but very real.

Overall I enjoyed it and it's a good read. Just don't go into it expecting Harry Potter. This is mostly practical magic that would be beneficial in a world that isn't exclusively magical, but instead it relates in a lot of way to what might be advantageous in everyday life.