Bibliovermis

The Magicians, by Lev Grossman

10 Aug 2011 ★ ★☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ bookshop.orgBuy the book

This book starts out fascinating. It has familiar plotlines: magical other worlds, a wizard school. But the adult take on these things—a feeling of melancholy, magic being dark and complex, the potential for failure—give it an extra edge. Sadly, by the middle of the book, it's hard to find a character you don't hate, and by the end, the plot is so caught up in boring, pretentious navel-gazing, it's pretty hard to enjoy the obligatory dramatic magical showdown.

Good for: Not me! I pretty much hated this book. It was advertised to me as "Harry Potter for grown-ups," and I waited the whole book for that advertisement to bear fruit. Really, though, it was more like "Nick Hornby for jaded fantasy fans." Maybe with a more accurate idea of what you're getting into, you could enjoy the book a bit more than I did.

Read my review of The Magician King

Comments

Alicia said:On Aug 10, 11 at 2:04pm

I 100% agree! I was so excited about this book when I started it and by the end I just wanted to slap all the characters. Apparently the sequel is coming out soon, or is out now, but at this point I don't plan to read it.

Audrey said:On Aug 10, 11 at 1:38pm

I'm planning on reading it and putting a review up here. Reading cruddy books so you don't have to!

Hope Rider said:On Aug 31, 11 at 8:02pm

Oh good! I felt exactly the same way about the first one. So many of the reviews just seemed to be about a different book than the one I read that I felt a little weird that I hated it by the end...

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