Oh there is so much to say about this book! Where do I even start?!There are, however, some prerequisites needed for you to fully enjoy this book. The first is you have to have read The Chronicles of Narnia by C. S. Lewis, if not in its entirety, then at the very least more than The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe, and most assuredly NOT the movies. Second, you should be familiar with the Harry Potter franchise, in this case the movies or the books are fine. Third, you have to be an avid reader of fantasy, understand it's many cliches in and out, and be somewhat open minded about them. Fourth, I gotta say that you have to be at least over the age of 16 but I'd college experience is highly recommended.
Now before you get ahead of yourselves and go bitching to me about how I'm trying to censure you, read that first sentence again "...for you to fully enjoy this book". Hell, you could not know who CS Lewis or Harry Potter are, never read a fantasy book in your life , and be 12 and I'll bet you might still enjoy this book. You certainly won't catch a lot of the little things, but the writing is solid, and the story is well laid out.
Anyway, this book was unexpected for me. I have a list going of books that I see around my work that interest me and that eventually I need to read, usually I just pick the next book off that list and read that at work, but here I found myself drawn to it. Maybe it was the title--I'm a sucker for magicians anything--maybe it was the fact that one of our competitors broke the laydown date and got us to sell it three days early, or maybe it was the intense endorsement by Martin
"These days any novel about young sorcerers at wizard school inevitably invites comparison to Harry Potter. Lev Grossman meets the challenge head on ... and very successfully. The Magicians is to Harry Potter as a shot of Irish whiskey is to a glass of weak tea."
whatever the reason I read the jacket and dived in.
As I've said on more than one occasion I'm not a fan of book reports, I don't like spoilers, nor do am I very good at summarizing so I'm just gonna talk about what I felt about it. The old adage "Imitation is the highest form of flattery" is so extraordinarily accurate in this case that whoever came up with it must have known this book was coming out. What I mean is this: Grossman has essentially recreated Narnia, mated it with Hogwarts, and thrown in some Tolkien genes. He's said in several interviews that he was absolutely in love with Narnia as a child and wanted to recreate it as an adult with more adult themes, especially the idea of fantasy wearing away as you grow up. He did this with a masterful touch, his characters are nihilistic college kids who essentially have everything, brains, magic, love, etc. but want more. How real is that? We all grow up with these fantasies of changing the world, of how cool and amazing being an adult will be, the absolute kickass-ness of being in college, but what happens? We find out that it all actually kinda sucks. We end up going to college, but within a month the novelty wears off and we're once again in a class room learning about things that we don't care about. Being an adult? Yeah, no kid ever thinks of responsibility or if they do it's in a naive way. Paying bills, having relationships, school, work, social life, everything that goes along with being an adult seems neat, sure, but then it happens and it's just.. blah. We look around after 5 years, 10 years, 40 years, and what have we done with ourselves? Nothing. We work or go to school (both usually), we go home, we eat, we sleep, but there's no real magic to any of it. What happens to that feeling we all get in our stomach about the future? Those butterflies that say everything is going to be amazing tomorrow? They get blindsided by reality. They don't exist. We began to question why we're here, what we're doing with ourselves, whats the point of it all; fall into drugs, alcohol, sex, and depression. This is what being an adult is. It's not magical animals talking to you, fantastic voyages and adventures, it's not fair maidens or evil villains, life is just life. No more. No less. Lev Grossman takes this idea, this horrible realization and puts it in a world where some of those things actually exist. What happens? The characters STILL aren't happy, they're still depressed, they're still nihilistic, and essentially they're still unhappy. What Grossman accomplishes is perhaps one of the best social satires of our generation. The generation of tomorrow, the generation of selfishness, the generation of why.
He's right too. We read fantasy to escape the world, we read it to go some place where things are happy, full of adventure and meaning, but really, would we even be happy there? Is it even possible for us to be happy or even satisfied with anything? He takes Narnia, Hogwarts, and Middle Earth and shows us that, no, we won't ever be happy. Sure it sounds dark, it sounds awful, but it's realistic. It may be exaggerated, most things are after all, but he hit the nail on the head. Us 20 somethings are so dissatisfied with everything that we're losing sight of what really matters. The people we love, our friends, our family, husbands, wives, and kids. We spend so much time trying to be better, trying to find something more, escaping from our own worlds that we lose that which gives our lives the meaning they desperately need. The Magicians is quite the eye opener, at least it was for me. I'm exactly what he described with his book, I have the exact same mentality of these kids, and honestly.. it was both horrifying and hilarious all at the same time. Absurd even.
The best part about it, though, was the fact that unlike dusty old fiction books, The Magicians was stupendously entertaining. Even if you don't read for themes, for so called "deeper meanings", you'll have a hell of a time trying to put his down. The characters are fantastic, you love them, you hate them, and most importantly you connect with them. The world is familiar, both in the sense of the "real world" and that of a Narnia-esqe settings, and the plot is well thought out and well executed. Although some may feel that his almost blatant plagiarism is a turn off, I found that combined with his message it was done not out of malice, but out of love for those works he was so inspired by. Some may think he was just taking Narnia and adding to it for his own monetary gains, but I would have to disagree. Sure there are huge, HUGE similarities between Fillory and Narnia, things are fundamentally different. At times I was a little put off, sure, but looking back on it now after a few books and a month of pondering, I was put off by the realistic tones of the story. I picked up the book, looked at the fantasy label, and assumed it would be just another great happy-go-lucky piece of work, that was quickly shattered. He not only made fun of my mentality, as well he should have, but also that of every fantasy author out there, of every college student, of every person, he managed to criticize things we all have in common in such a way as to make us love and hate him. Some people just criticize, like myself, and people hate them.. but Lev Grossman does what every satirist dreams about, actually accomplishes his criticisms of live, love, and human nature, in a way that people LOVE. It's brilliant!
I'll say this though, it's not for those that are looking for the same old fantasy. It's not for those who like tame stories, or those looking for certain things, it's for those that are almost fed up with the Fantasy cliches, fed up with people, fed up with life. It'll bring you around, lemme tell ya, but like all things it has to be taken with a grain of salt, and an open mind.
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