The Magician King

This was a brilliant sequel that was just as funny and clever as the first book. It was nice getting to see things from Julia's point of view, and comparing her character arc with Quentin's. In fact I ended up liking Julia more than Quentin, though I do still like Quentin.

I loved Julia's online family/support group, and how it "wasn't a meatspace thing." Julia "opened herself up to them in a way she never had to anyone...She poured out her broken heart to the Free Traders, and they took it and cleaned it up and fixed it up and gave it back to her fresh and bloody and pumping again." It's great to see the the value of long-distance relationships being taken seriously. I can relate to feeling like the only people who really know and accept you unconditionally are people you'll probably never meet in person and who live across the globe. There was a time when I was like Julia, carrying around my "pocket friends" and living in my own digital world with them all day every day. It was great to see that kind of situation represented in a narrative.

THE AUDIOBOOK
Commute audiobook. Criteria: 1. Must be simple enough that I can divide my attention between book and driving and still follow along. 2. Interesting/complex enough to keep me awake on very long drives. 3. Optionally, a great reader.

1. Honestly probably a little complex for a commute audiobook. I kept having to back up when I would realize I had missed something important.
2. Definitely interesting. I never minded having to back up and listen to something again. I looked forward to my drives knowing if get to listen to more.
3. Great reader with a gorgeous deep thrumming voice, I'd eagerly listen to him read the phone book. Though the "Australian" accent he uses for one of the characters is painful.

THE BOOK
It was awesome. Yes. Awesome. I really enjoyed the first book and was looking forward to this but it blew my wildest hopes of a worthy sequel completely out of the water. (Suddenly I doubt my knowledge of idioms. "Blow it out of the water" is an expression, right? That means something exceeded expectations? Am I making this up?)

Like The Magicians, The Magician King is divided into halves, but the halves are interwoven rather then sequential. Half deals with the aftermath of the events of The Magicians. The other half overlaps with the events of The Magicians-- it's the story of Julia, Quentin's real world friend with magic potential but who didn't get into magic school, and who set out to become a magician anyway. Let me be clear, I do not find her particularly likeable (true of everyone in these books) but I do love her story which felt more original than the magic school from The Magicians. Without the school, she (and lev grossman) had to get creative.

As with The Magicians, The Magician King is a well done satire of fantasy literature, managing to highlight and flout many of the conventions of the genre while also adhering to them. The end result is kind of nihilistic, really. Characters put everything they have into working toward their goals --and finding quests to give their lives meaning-- only to find that when all is said and done, there is no greater meaning. One day at a time, one foot in front of the other, and in the end all you're left with is yourself. Better hope you're not a giant sack o'misery... Oh wait.

I can't give that fifth star though, there are problems I can't (don't want to) ignore. Why is Julia so desperate to learn magic? Back in The Magicians she thought Quentin's obsession with the Fillory books was weird and juvenile; are we supposed to believe her here when she insists all she's wanted since she was little was to learn magic? Or is this an intentional sign of an unreliable narrator (which would add a level of interest--she's a genius with no insight into self). Also, why must we spend so much time hearing about the relative attractiveness and/or fuckability of all the female characters? It made sense in The Magicians which was all Quentin all the time (and Quentin is a giant asshole, so...). But we spend a lot less time inside Quentin's head in this book; it feels like the book--and maybe grossman?-- is objectifying women for no good reason, rather than Quentin, which is off putting. Another problem, not enough Janet. Bring her back in book 3!

Looking forward to book 3.

I should like this book, this one and the Magicians, the first. I REALLY should like these books a lot, because they have everything I like: they are fantasy novels with terrific writing, snarky characters with lots of flaws, and a smart pop-culty meta self-awareness of traditional fantasy novel tropes (Narnia, especially).

But I've ended up profoundly disappointed with both these books because the plotting, and the motivation of the characters to drive that plot, just feel confused and wrong to me. The first book was good up until the characters graduated from Brakebills and then went awry; this book just staggers around randomly right from the start. This was one of the few books I've read where when a character does something completely implausible I have had to put the book down on the table and shout at it.

I read a lot of genre fiction, and those books are often crappily written, with thin characters and clunky writing. I am not as offended by those books. For me it seems that Magicians and the Magician King aim higher than the genre watermark in terms of literary quality, but they fall down in basic storytelling.

Son of a...

Let's start with The Magicians. At the time, I thought it was "okay" - being a fan of series like Harry Potter, The Chronicles of Narnia, etc., I had a difficult time merging new-age teenage sullenness - no matter how true-to-life - with my idea of those playful, magical fantasy worlds established elsewhere. That said, I thought The Magicians explored some very interesting themes: disillusionment with one's current status/life/the state of the universe, the adolescent feeling of invincibility that comes with college life, the somewhat stagnant realization that life-after-college isn't all its cracked up to be (even when infused with magic), etc.

I picked up The Magician King because there was enough in the first book to interest me. I wasn't expecting a lot, but I thought I'd give it a shot.

Boy, did this book catch me off guard. It was good. It was very good (much, much better than I'd expected).

Quentin, the main character, has landed on top of the magical world: he's the king of Fillory, the fantasy land that he's idolized his entire life. However, even after gaining everything he ever wanted, he's bored. He needs some sort of quest because, after all, that's what every fantasy hero needs (and no one knows that cliche - and that it is a cliche - better than Quentin). So, along with his fellow King (Eliot) and Queens (Janet and Julia), our hero sets off to find his adventure.

What follows is a multi-layered tapestry of discovery, adventure, pain, suffering loss, disbelief, love, and destiny. The story bobs and weaves between time and space, switching between the present story of Quentin's adventures, the past story of Julia's transformation from Stanford-bound know-it-all to power-hungry hedge witch, and the strange, heart-wrenching thread that ties these two plotlines together.

I loved this book. However, let's go back to that first sentence. I won't spoil it, but the story's ending is a sure-as-shootin' cliffhanger. It's okay - even exciting - that Lev Grossman plans to write a third novel in this series; however, this book ends too quickly and quirkily, as if Grossman needed to stop before he wove his third time into this one.

Oh well. Minor quibble. The Magician King (and, truly, this whole series) is flawed, yes, but so is the reality it describe: our reality. These books speak to the deep part of us that, like Quentin, wishes magic could solve the world's problems. Give this one (and its a predecessor, if you haven't already) a shot.