The Magicians: Book 1 – Lev Grossman – 05.05.25, The Magician King: The Magicians, Book 2 – Lev Grossman – 20.05.25, The Magician’s Land: The Magicians, Book 3 – Lev Grossman – 31.05.25
I have to say that this series really grew on me. At the end of the first book, I was ready to write a quite scathing review along the lines of : ‘If the Harry Potter books and the Narnia Chronicles got married and moved the America, and had a baby that grew up to be the worst kind of winey bratty American teenager then that would be this book!’ and in a sense, that, I think is a fair review of book one, but perhaps the main protagonist, Quentin, who found out that magic is real not as an abused eleven year old (like Harry Potter) but as a normal (ish) American 18 year old, and the magical school he ended up in was college rather than high school, needed to be so objectionable so we (the readers) could see the journey he went on because, to be fair, he does a lot of growing up by the end of the series.
As well as Harry Potter parallels, the very obvious homage to the Narnia chronicles was a series of books Quentin read repeatedly and loved as a child where English children find their way into a magical land called ‘Fillory’ and have adventures with talking animals and magical beasts and become kings and queens.
The Fillory books and the real family they describe feature heavily in this series because it turns out that they too are real and Quentin finds a way to enter the magical land.
At first this annoyed me – I thought this is basically just fan fiction about Narnia and Harry potter but with swearing and sex, but with more pondering I’m coming around to thinking that including mythology from these books in a new work of fiction is no different than the many fantasy stories that draw on classical mythology, just that the source material is less old.
I did find myself becoming more and more invested in the characters of Quentin and his friends, and in the fate of the magical world of Fillory, and ended up really enjoying the reading experience.
Sarah Wray Writer 