Youthful Fantasy With a Mature Edge. Review: Lev Grossman's The Magicians

The Magicians by Lev Grossman
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

As a child I was enchanted by C.S. Lewis' The Chronicles of Narnia, so much so that I wished I could find gateway into an enchanted world to escape my boring life here in plain old reality. Adventure, magic, talking animals, and the ability to make a real difference in the world all called to me from between the pages. Fast forward to 7th grade, my first year of High School and J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone comes out and draws me once more into a world of magic and adventure with the twist that it isn't happening in another world but just along side the world we “Muggles” know. These two series have stayed with me over the years and have been old friends to turn to when times are tough. So when I started seeing recommendations for Lev Grossman's The Magicians mentioning that fans of these two series would find Fillory and Brakebills familiar in many ways I was at first skeptical of the quality of the story thinking it would turn out to be Harry Potter and Oh Look it's Narnia. I was delightfully wrong in that assumption.

I was surprised by how little detail is used to describe protagonist Quentin Coldwater's 5 years at Breakbills, yet it felt like I was there with him from the day of his acceptance test to the day of his graduation. More than Hogwarts in all of its grandiose detail ever did I felt Breakbills as a living place. The simple descriptions of the way the students interacted with each other and the school grounds felt like something I could have experienced while away at college myself, minus the magic of course.

Breakbills even has its own magical sport, Welters, which gives you the basic rules and then seems to go out of its way to become nearly incomprehensible even to the players themselves. Still the descriptions of the Welters matches (of which there are far fewer than Rowling's Quidditch) kept me enthalled without feeling like the book had become a sports story. Instead of feeling like a break in the action the Welters segments served to give greater insight into the characters and their relationships with each other, the school, and magic itself.

While the Fillory elements of the story draw heavily on the foundation laid by Lewis' Narnia it is its own world entirely and has plenty of nasty little surprises in store for both the characters and readers. Where Narnia, though conflicted, is primarily a realm of truth and beauty Fillory at first presents the same face before revealing a darker and more mature view of the realities of such a fantasy world. Not all creatures who offer help are all they seem and the reality of conflict is that not just the “bad guys” are hurt or even killed. This more than anything is what amazed me the most.

The Magicians is that rare thing, a fantasy story set in our own world as well as in another world with a maturity unlike anything else I've encountered in the genre. This is a world where not everything can be solved at the flick of a wand and, in fact, magic in many ways causes as many if not more problems than it solves. This is the story of that child I once was who longed to disappear into Narnia to escape her problems here learning that no matter how far away you may run, you always bring yourself with you. There's a very real reminder that war, no matter how it's dressed up, is a horrible thing and those who fight with you may not always get the happily ever after.

Quentin's journey from our mundane world to Breakbills and back to the mundane world could be a whole novel on its own in the hands of another writer, but Grossman uses this as the spring board for the deeper story of Quentin's journey from the mundane world to Fillory, the land he always dreamed of. The way that Grossman handles the question of what a Magician does once they've been trained and sent back to the “real” world parallels the dilemma faced by so many students upon graduation. “Well, I've got my degree. Now what?” What do you do when you can do practically anything?

Overall The Magicians was an amazing novel, hooking me right off the bat. I stayed up far later than I should've when I have work the next morning because I started this book before going to sleep one night because I was so enchanted by the world Lev Grossman was weaving. I haven't been this excited by a book in a long time and was sad to find that I had come to the end. The Magicians is book one of a Trilogy and I will definitely be picking up the remaining two titles The Magician King and The Magician's Land the next chance I get. I would most definitely recommend this book to anyone who has read and enjoyed C. S. Lewis' The Chronicles of Narnia and J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter Series.