The Magicians
Quentin Coldwater is brilliant but miserable. He's a senior in high school, and a certifiable genius, but he's still secretly obsessed with a series of fantasy novels he read as a kid, about the adventures of five children in a magical land called Fillory. Compared to that, anything in his real life just seems gray and colorless.
Everything changes when Quentin finds himself unexpectedly admitted to a very secret, very exclusive college of magic in upstate New York, where he receives a thorough and rigorous education in the practice of modern sorcery. He also discovers all the other things people learn in college: friendship, love, sex, booze, and boredom. But something is still missing. Magic doesn't bring Quentin the happiness and adventure he thought it would.
Then, after graduation, he and his friends make a stunning discovery: Fillory is real.
The Magicians was published in August 2009 and was a New York Times bestseller. You can order it at any of these online bookstores:
Praise for The Magicians from Critics:
“Exuberant and inventive ... Fresh and compellling ... The Magicians is a great fairy tale.”
—The Washington Post
“Lev Grossman's novel The Magicians may just be the most subversive, gripping and enchanting fantasy novel I've read this century.”
—Cory Doctorow, Boing Boing
“This is my ideal escapist fantasy read, a Harry Potter book for grown-ups ... I can't imagine any lover of well-written classic fantasy, from C. S. Lewis's Narnia books to the works of Diana Wynne Jones, who won't absolutely adore it.”
—Lisa Tuttle, The London Times
“The Magicians is the best urban fantasy in years.”
—The Onion AV Club
“This gripping novel draws on the conventions of contemporary and classic fantasy novels in order to upend them, and tell a darkly cunning story about the power of imagination itself ... An unexpectedly moving coming-of-age story.”
—The New Yorker
“Funny, suspenseful and sad, The Magicians ranks as one of the year's best fantasy novels.”
—The San Francisco Chronicle
“ Upon reading The Magicians, the first thing you want to do is shake Grossman's hand and congratulate him for his courage ... The Magicians blooms with grace and wit and imaginative brio. Grossman has a sense of humor as well as a sense of wonder.”
—The Chicago Tribune
“The Magicians is Harry Potter as it might have been written by John Crowley...This is one of the best fantasies I've read in ages.”
—Elizabeth Hand, Fantasy & Science Fiction
“The Magicians by Lev Grossman is a very entertaining book; one of those summer page-turners that you wish went on for another six volumes ... Grossman is at the height of his powers.”
—The Chicago Sun-Times
“Long ago, while in high school, I read two coming-of-age novels that stayed with me for the rest of my life ... I'd not found another voice so rich in describing the adventure and confusion that is growing up in America until now. THE MAGICIANS, like those earlier books, tells that same journey; only its route is one of magic and fantasy.”
—Ron Fortier, The Denver Times
“Sly and lyrical ... The Magicians is an homage to both J.K. Rowling and C.S. Lewis, as well as an exploration of what might happen if troubled kids were let loose in the supernatural realms they grew up reading about. Grossman captures the magic of childhood and the sobering years beyond.”
—Jeff Giles, Entertainment Weekly
“The Magicians is a triumph. It's the real deal, guaranteed.”
—Michelle Kerns, The Examiner
“The Magicians is angst-ridden, bleak, occasionally joyous and gloriously readable. Forget Hogwarts: this is where the magic really is.”
—Jayne Nelson, SFX, 5 star review.
“I felt like I was doing peyote buttons with J.K. Rowling.”
—Mickey Rapkin, GQ
“For readers who have long since finished their seven years at Hogwarts, The Magicians is where higher education starts.”
—The Miami Herald
Praise forThe Magicians from other authors:
“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. Solidly rooted in the traditions of both fantasy and mainstream literary fiction, the novel tips its hat to Oz and Narnia as well to Harry, but don't mistake this for a children's book. Grossman's sensibilities are thoroughly adult, his narrative dark and dangerous and full of twists. Hogwart's was never like this.”
—George R. R. Martin, author of the A Song of Ice and Fire series
“Stirring, complex, adventurous … from the life of Quentin Coldwater, his slacker Park Slope Harry Potter, Lev Grossman delivers superb coming of age fantasy.”
—Junot Díaz, author of Drown and The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
“The Magicians ought to be required reading for anyone who has ever fallen in love with a fantasy series, or wished they went to a school for wizards.”
—Kelly Link, author of Magic for Beginners and Stranger Things Happen
“Remember the last time you ran home to finish a book? This is it, folks. The Magicians is the most dazzling, erudite and thoughtful fantasy novel to date. You'll be bedazzled by the magic but also brought short by what it has to say about the world we live in.”
—Gary Shteyngart, author of The Russian Debutante's Handbook and Absurdistan
“The Magicians brilliantly explores the hidden underbelly of fantasy and easy magic, taking what's simple on the surface and turning it over to show us the complicated writhing mess beneath. It's like seeing the worlds of Narnia and Harry Potter through a 3-D magnifying glass.”
—Naomi Novik, author of the Temeraire series
“The Magicians is a spellbinding, fast-moving, dark fantasy book for grownups that feels like an instant classic. I read it in a niffin-blue blaze of page turning, enthralled by Grossman's verbal and imaginative wizardry, his complex characters and most of all, his superb, brilliant inquiry into the wondrous, dangerous world of magic.”
—Kate Christensen, author of The Epicure's Lament and The Great Man
“Anyone who grew up reading about magical wardrobes and unicorns and talking trees before graduating to Less Than Zero and The Secret History and Bright Lights, Big City will immediately feel right at home with this smart, beautifully written book by Lev Grossman. The Magicians is fantastic, in all senses of the word. It's strange, fanciful, extravagant, eccentric, and truly remarkable--a great story, masterfully told.”
—Scott Smith, author of A Simple Plan and The Ruins
The artist Roland Chambers has prepared this map of Fillory, showing the country's major landmarks:
(CLICK IMAGE FOR A LARGER VERSION)
Bookseller Reviews for The Magicans:
“This book is Harry Potter for grown-ups. Quentin Coldwater arrives at his Princeton alumni interviewer's house to find the man dead on the floor. A paramedic hands him an envelope containing a note and book six of Quentin's favorite 5-part series, a Narnia-esque fantasy for children. But before he can read the manuscript, he finds himself transported to upstate New York, where he is accepted to a magical academy that no one has ever heard of. Thus begins a very unconventional college experience--it involves the usual drama of drinking and relationships, plus the added stress of advanced spell work. Quentin's struggles with power and responsibility, and his search for happiness within the world he's always dreamed of, make this a compelling and strangely believable novel. I couldn't put it down.”
— Jessica "Jake" Hallman, A Great Good Place for Books, Oakland, CA
“The Magicians - Lev Grossman's response/riposte to the Harry Potter phenomenon - starts off well enough. Actually, it starts off damn enjoyable, with just enough of a balance between hat-tipping to J K Rowling and tweaking her British nose. Pretty much the entire first book maintains an distinct balancing act of fleshing out its characters, its magic, and it's world (or rather, reminding us which features it shares with Rowling's, Le Guin's, White's, and of course Lewis's worlds). The main character of Quentin stops just short enough of making a deep impression to allow Grossman to tweak our image of him later on, but all the secondary characters immediately leap to life, complete with tics, failings, secrets, and, most importantly, full fledged, multi-tiered personalities. The kids feel like people - except not quite ready people, because, well, they also feel like kids.
And then comes book two. Grossman was doing a great job both conjuring up real twenty-somethings with cigarettes clenched in their hands and unrequited lust in their - well, not in their hearts, that's for sure. He was doing a great, great job of pulling off that perfect teenage urge of no-one-gets-me I'm-meant-for-greater-things-but-also-drowning-in-unbearable loneliness; all that goes right the hell out the window in a deluge of drugs, party scene mistakes, and alcoholism. Otherwise known as the mistakes of a lot of kids make when they're that age. Here, it would be tempting to write The Magicians off as a 'hard-edge Harry Potter clone', but that doesn't do justice to just how closely the reader is tied to these characters, even as they casually destroy their lives.
And then redemption comes. If book one is a love letter/sly riposte to Rowling, and book two an attempt at bringing gritty 'realism' to the realm of modern fantasy, book three transcends them both - and any other label or title or witticism I can come up with. It is simply - in a word, in a term, in the characters, in their relationships, in their world, in every single sentence on every single page - fantastic. And this is coming from someone who is not in the least bit a fan of C.S. Lewis's bible-as-storybook Narnia series, of which Grossman most closely patterns his last third with. Instead, we get archetypical hero's journey as morality tale as referendum on the lives each of his characters have led, no flaw left unexamined, no sin left unregarded, no act of mercy unpunished.
And then there's the ending. I love the possibilities it suggests, I hate the possibilities it doesn't reject. Which is exactly where the brilliance lies. It's en ending that's not an ending; not quite - it suggests that there is an ending, and there is an answer, and there is just the tiniest hint of an improbable possibility that Quentin's suffering will have earned him something - or possibly that his suffering was never his to own all along, that his sins were his, and only by moving beyond them will he be who he is truly meant to. And that seems, to me, to be the point of all great fantasy - the story goes on, in its own realm beyond my imagination or the author's, long after the final cover has been closed.”
— Drew Williams, Little Professor Book Center, Homewood, AL
