The Magician's Land

I think this is the happiest I have been to get a book through first-reads. I loved the first two books in this series, but I read them quite some time ago, and I was worried I wouldn't remember enough to really enjoy this one. However, Grossman does a nice job of bringing the reader back up to speed and reminding them of all the craziness that has ensued. It's a good thing he does because this book builds on everything that has gone before while remaining a unique story in its own right.

I think I like this the best of the trilogy because I can finally relate to Quentin. He gets a lot of flack as a character for being selfish, immature, and generally unlikable. That's all true of the first two books, but I don't think that's a reason to write them off. The Quentin Coldwater of The Magician and The Magician King is a college kid, and he acts like a college kid oozing youthful ennui. College kids can be idiots and even when they aren't, they have a lot of lessons yet to learn. I think that 22 was probably the stupidest age of my life, the age when I made my worst decisions and concocted my most ill-thought out plans. At 22, you are invincible and the sheltered environment of a university, even a magical university occasionally overrun by horrors from other dimensions, provides a barrier against the real world.

The Quentin Coldwater of the The Magician's Land is 30, and his increased self-awareness helps make him a very realistic portrait of the age. He looks back at his mistakes and owns them. He makes new mistakes and owns those too. He has stopped whining, recognized that perpetually hunting a Questing Beast is not a healthy way to live, and tries to make something out of life once he realizes he is literally no longer living in a fairy tale. Quentin has grown out of his own story, and he has to start a new one. He runs into old ghosts (again, sometimes literally) and is repeatedly reminded of who he was. For those people, he's still that idiotic college kid, but now Quentin is sure enough of himself to say, “Yes, I was that. I'm not anymore.”

So if you enjoyed the first two books but were iffy on Quentin, this one is still worth the read. The actual story is just as dramatic and even twistier than the first two with new characters, new threats to Fillory, and tons of snarky references. Old characters return, again many of whom have matured and changed into new characters. Getting Eliot and Janet's POV is refreshing and lends them a depth that is never granted in the earlier chapters. The dialog remains one of the best parts, and even though the prose is extremely colloquial, it never sounds juvenile or cheesy. The plot winds down a dozen different roads and tangents, never ending up quite where it you'd expect and remaining engrossing right to the end.

I also would be remiss if I failed to point out that from a feminist perspective, this book is gold. Why? Plum. Plum is introduced, assigned to the role of Quentin's apprentice, and proceeds to become an autonomous character who never has a romantic subplot with anyone! Yes, ladies and gentlemen, it is possible to have a female POV character with no romantic subplot. A weaker writer would have had her fall into an unrequited love triangle with Quentin and Alice but it never happens. Can I get a hallelujah? Also, it's a great name. Grossman really has fun picking out great names.

Grossman has produced a lovely trilogy here, one that I am happy to recommend to my thirtysomething friends as a book for us. It's a story of consequences, self-awareness, and life after fairy tales which our generation needs.