But it's also thrilling and exciting and totally unpredictable.What are we to make of Lev Grossman’s Magicians trilogy? Its final installment, The Magician’s Land, came out in August, and reviews glowed bright, almost embarrassingly so: They’re calling it the perfect conclusion to one of the great fantasy series of our time. There are some really beautiful themes woven into this story - about the way people experience stories as children, teenagers, and adults about growing up, and of course love, redemption, all that stuff. Now, Quentin has had time to reflect on the world, magic, and life in general, and he's more optimistic, thoughtful, and creative. Previously, we experienced everything through the lens of the main characters' (often tiresome) teenaged jaded world-weariness.
In the end, everything ties back to Brakebills and Fillory - and this is where this book really starts to stand out as something exceptional. It's funny, a little sad, and insanely dangerous, and it sucked me into the story at once. It's incredibly refreshing, and so is the first part of the story: Quentin, working as a magical gun-for-hire, gets involved in an ill-advised heist for some shady characters. Quentin finally gets some perspective! He has become the likeable adult that often results from a troubled and disaffected youth. I showed up for "The Magician's Land" ready to have my 30-something worldview shaken around once more by the horrifying genius teenagers from the previous novels, only to find them all grown up (at least, those who survived) and behaving much more sensibly, and sensitively, than I expected.
The stories have it right for most of us-once you grow up it is almost impossible to fully return to those lands of your dreams, whether it be Narnia, Fillory or Neverland. It makes me a little sad-I wish I could have gotten more into the spirit and summoned back to life the sense of wonder I had as a child. For me, however, the mystery of the first novel in the series was missing and I found it increasingly hard to care about what happened to the characters in a world so disconnected from our own. Descriptions of the imaginary world and its inhabitants are lush and evocative and sure to appeal to lovers of the genre. At his best, Lev Grossman recreates in my heart the almost painful yearning I had as a child to enter the fantastical world of of Narnia (Fillory, in Grossman's rendering of that world). How would those stories play out if the characters were allowed to mature and develop in the "real world"? I loved the first book of the trilogy, the second a little less so and the third (this one) not so much. It's the story of a boy becoming a man, an apprentice becoming a master, and a broken land finally becoming whole.Īlthough not usually a fan of the fantasy genre, a large part of the appeal of this trilogy for me has been its inspiration from the Narnia chronicles of C.S.Lewis which captivated me as a child. The Magician's Land is an intricate thriller, a fantastical epic and an epic of love and redemption that brings the Magicians trilogy to a magnificent climax, confirming it as one of the great achievements in modern fantasy. To save them he will have to risk sacrificing everything. He uncovers the key to a sorcerous masterwork, a spell that could create magical utopia, a new Fillory - but casting it will set in motion a chain of events that will bring Earth and Fillory crashing together. But all roads lead back to Fillory, and his new life takes him to old haunts, like Antarctica and the Netherlands, and buried secrets, and old friends he thought were lost forever. But he can't hide from his past, and it's not long before it comes looking for him.Īlong with Plum, a brilliant young undergraduate with a dark secret of her own, Quentin sets out on a crooked path through a magical demimonde of grey magic and desperate characters. With nothing left to lose he returns to where his story began, the Brakebills Preparatory College of Magic. Quentin Coldwater has been cast out of Fillory, the secret magical land of his childhood dreams. The stunning conclusion to the New York Times best-selling Magicians trilogy.