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Loading... The Magicians (2009)by Lev Grossman
  
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 PurplOttr | Dec 1, 2023 |   Roughly the first half of the book follows Quentin and his friends through magic school - this was the most interesting part to me, mostly because I've never read Harry Potter. Then the book shifts to post-graduation, where he and his friends do little more than get drunk, and then the last quarter of the book is in the magical land of Fillory, a world that seemed to just be a cheap imitation of Narnia and which was never really fleshed out. Since there was no plot, all these setting changes made the book that much more disjointed. Then there was the unnecessary language and sex, the general "nothing in life matters, I'll just be miserable, then miserable some more, then repeat," attitude of all of the characters, and the gore thrown in that didn't seem to fit with the rest of the book. Eeesh... I'm not sure how this got to be so popular? (  ) RachelRachelRachel | Nov 21, 2023 | ) hubrisinmotion | Nov 14, 2023 |  ) cdaley | Nov 2, 2023 | I'm sure that almost everybody fantasizes at some point about realizing they have magic. That was what happened to Harry Potter and that's what happened to Quentin. However, The Magicians is a bit darker since it's more "realistic" and incorporates more real life issues such as drugs, sex, depression, desires, etc. However, I felt that sometimes this realism was a bit forced. Still, I enjoyed reading The Magicians and I think I'll give the sequels (at least the 2nd one) a try. I might even check out the TV version of it. ( ) Tom.Morrison | Nov 1, 2023 |
 ”Magikerna” marknadsförs som ”Harry Potter för vuxna”, men i själva verket är det en ovanligt vacker sorgesång över hur det är att lämna barndomen. Det var faktiskt bättre förr, när man kunde uppslukas helt av leken.  This isn't just an exercise in exploring what we love about fantasy and the lies we tell ourselves about it -- it's a shit-kicking, gripping, tightly plotted novel that makes you want to take the afternoon off work to finish it.  It’s the original magic — storytelling — that occasionally trips Grossman up. Though the plot turns new tricks by the chapter, the characters have a fixed, “Not Another Teen Movie” quality. There’s the punk, the aesthete, the party girl, the fat slacker, the soon-to-be-hot nerd, the shy, angry, yet inexplicably irresistible narrator. Believable characters form the foundation for flights of fantasy. Before Grossman can make us care about, say, the multiverse, we need to intuit more about Quentin’s interior universe. Somewhat familiar, albeit entertaining... Grossman's writing is intelligent, but don't give this one to the kids—it's a dark tale that suggests our childhood fantasies are no fun after all. Grossman has written both an adult coming-of-age tale—rife with vivid scenes of sex, drugs, and heartbreak—and a whimsical yarn about forest creatures. The subjects aren’t mutually exclusive, and yet when stirred together so haphazardly, the effect is jarring. More damaging still is the plot, which takes about 150 pages to gain any steam, surges dramatically in the book’s final third, and then peters out with a couple chapters left to go. Is contained inHas the adaptationWas inspired by
Haboring secret preoccupations with a magical land he read about in a childhood fantasy series, Quentin Coldwater is unexpectedly admitted into an exclusive college of magic and rigorously educated in modern sorcery. No library descriptions found. |
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 Google Books — Loading...GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)813.54Literature English (North America) American fiction 20th Century 1945-1999LC ClassificationRatingAverage: (3.44)
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The Magicians - Lev Grossman
Wikipedia in English (2)
15
I understand paying homage to authors and stories that you enjoy, but not to this degree. I didn't find there to be anything unique about this book - teen angst, school for wizards, travelling to other worlds to be kings/queens. Yes, this novel was darker in some spots than the other stories, but that wasn't enough for me to forget the references.
The plot was also all over the place. There was no real story-arch that kept you wanting to see what happened next, and to glue the pieces together. The different periods of Q's life in the story were very separate, without much linking them together. Yes, he talks about Fillory a lot, but it would have been great to see him trying to get there throughout the novel, without it just suddenly happening 3/4 of the way through the book (and by a different character, at that). I didn't have any sense of what the 'big bad' was, and what the quest or adventure was.
I just found this book hard to like - the plot was too choppy, characters I didn't really care for, and way too derivative without a new spin to give it uniqueness. (