7: The Novel of Spiritual Education

The Magicians

I decided to skip reading Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern I read a lot of reviews and they weren’t very promising and I don’t want to read Harry Potter but I did check out The Magicians by Lev Grossman. It was advertised as a grown up Harry Potter so I gave it a go.

Synopsis

The book follows the adventures of Quentin Coldwater, a genius high school grad with below-average social skills and obsession with his childhood fiction of a land named Fillory. He is accepted to Brakebills Academy a magician’s college. Through his five years of schooling Quentin still had to deal with his social issues and learning magic turned out to be not so…“magical.” Horror strikes the school with the arrival of a creature known as The Beast. Quentin bands together with Alice, Eliot, and Janet. Upon graduating Quentin discovers that Fillory is real.

In the end, the group fights against “The Beast,” who is revealed to be a character named Martin Chatwin who gave up his humanity in order to stay in Fillory. Alice sacrifices herself to kill Martin, Penny and Quentin are gravely injured, Quentin falling into a coma. Upon awakening, Quentin becomes depressed finding out Jane Chatwin reveals herself to had been pulling the strings the entire story through time travel. Quentin leaves Fillory after some time to become just another boring old human. Unsatisfied he later returns to Fillory with Eliot, Janet and Julia to become the kings and queens on the search for fulfillment.

Review

This Book was not for me it tries way to hard to be this more edgy work of fantasy but ends up just being depressing, lame and cold. It’s all over the place and wants to be something that it doesn’t accomplish. If this book were turned into a movie it would be horrible. Grossmen never reaches that transformative growth in his characters that books like Harry Potter accomplish to do so effortlessly. Which I assume he wanted to do but in the end the book doesn’t contrast Harry Potter instead it just highlights how underwhelming it is in comparison and I don't even really like Harry Potter.