Review: The Magicians

Quentin Coldwater is a high school senior, making plans for college.  He has a crush on a friend of his and, even though he’s the smartest person in his class, he feels unsettled and unsatisfied.  When he goes to interview for acceptance to Princeton, he finds his interviewer dead and he’s handed a manila envelope.  The contents of the envelope cause Quentin to discover a whole hidden world and he finds himself admitted to Brakebills – a college for magicians.

At first, Brakebills seems like the answer to all of Quentin’s prayers, but he finds that he doesn’t quite fit in even there.

It’s hard to say more about the plot of The Magicians by Lev Grossman without giving too much of the story away and I really try to avoid spoilers.   The book follows Quentin, and his fellow magicians, through Brakebills and after when they make a startling discovery.

I was excited when I found out that my book club had selected The Magicians, since I’d heard it described as “Harry Potter for adults,” but was disappointed when the book didn’t draw me in like I’d hoped it would. I felt like there was too much unnecessary descriptive text in the book and a lot of plot lines that were brought up and then dropped.  The characters seemed stagnant to me and I kept waiting for something to happen.

There were a lot of references to other fantasy novels and I did pick up on a few of them, but most of them were over my head since I haven’t read many of the classic fantasies.  Most of the other members of my book club picked up on more of them than I did.  This book didn’t really work for me, but I think a lot of that has to do with the fact that I’m not the target audience.  The one member of our book club who is a fantasy geek said that both she and her husband loved The Magicians.

Lev Grossman has a degree in literature from Harvard and currently works as the book critic for Time.  The Magicians is his third novel.

Review copy provided by Penguin.   I am an Amazon Associate.