The Magicians
A thrilling and original coming-of- age novel about a young man practicing magic in the real worldQuentin Coldwater is brilliant but miserable. A senior in high school, he’s still secretly preoccupied with a series of fantasy novels he read as a child, set in a magical land called Fillory. Imagine his surprise when he finds himself unexpectedly admitted to a very secret, very exclusive college of magic in upstate New York, where he receives a thorough and rigorous education in the craft of modern sorcery.He also discovers all the other things people learn in college: friendship, love, sex, booze, and boredom. Something is missing, though. Magic doesn’t bring Quentin the happiness and adventure he dreamed it would. After graduation he and his friends make a stunning discovery: Fillory is real. But the land of Quentin’s fantasies turns out to be much darker and more dangerous than he could have imagined. His childhood dream becomes a nightmare with a shocking truth at its heart.At once psychologically piercing and magnificently absorbing, The Magicians boldly moves into uncharted literary territory, imagining magic as practiced by real people, with their capricious desires and volatile emotions. Lev Grossman creates an utterly original world in which good and evil aren’t black and white, love and sex aren’t simple or innocent, and power comes at a terrible price.
Stats for nerds
13recommend
27mentions
22people
2010–2026years
63% recommend30% neutral7% critical
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- The Daemon series along with the Magicians Trilogy by Lev Grossman are two of my favorite sci-fi/fantasy series.
- "The people in this story are not like me: I find this implausible so I'm leaving it a one-star review" is to be expected. But that's already the case (if you want substantiating evidence just read my Amazon or Goodreads one-star reviews).
As somebody who really enjoyed Lev Grossman's book The Magicians, I remember being somewhat perplexed by the bizarrely high number of one-star reviews on Goodreads until I realized that the predominant reason for the poor reviews was because the protagonist is self-destructive, not particularly likable, and the story isn't one of conventional redemption.
The Magicians currently sits at 3.5 out of 5 stars on Goodreads, whilst pedestrian pablum like Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone has around a 4.5 rating, so make of that what you will.
- The Magicians, Lev Grossman
A Wizard of Earthsea
- Lives of the Great Composers by Harold Schoenberg
The merry adventures of Robin Hood by Howard Pyle
The Magicians Book #1 by Lev Grossman
Calvin and Hobbes by Bill Watterson
- I used to think that between Lord of the Rings, Earthsea, and Narnia, all of fantasy was tapped out. Harry Potter did nothing to dispel this idea. Only Grossman's The Magicians has proved my thinking wrong.
- As a fan if Fantasy, this article reminds me of Lev Grossman's The Magicians. It comes from very similar experiences the author had going to an Ivy League school. It is probably the best deconstruction of the magical school (think Harry Potter) subgenre because it touches on such real human experiences.
Most of the cast are people who did well in high school and were suddenly transported into an environment where they weren't special. It turns out being transported into a magical world doesn't make your problems go away.
