The Magicians

The Magicians is frequently billed as Harry Potter meets Narnia. What is left out is the heavy helping that Grossman borrows from a series of unfortunate events, which is, truly, unfortunate. The Magicians is really quite clever, when Grossman forgets to make all of his characters (and as a result, his reader) maximally miserable.

I've spent a lot of time thinking about why I didn't enjoy this book. I like urban fantasy. I like gritty literature. I loved the way the Grossman treated being a magician in a mundane world as something that would mess you up and remove your chances of having a normal life or normal interactions. I loved how academic and technical magic was. And, when Grossman concentrated on his own plot and his own ideas, the results were amazing.

To me, the problem arose in the set of totally unsympathetic disaffected 20-somethings that comprise that main cast. Although we're supposed to believe that they are the most brilliant youths in America, it seems to be a law of physics in Grossman's universe that whenever a character is confronted with two choices, they will chose the worse one. Perhaps it helps that his characters drink copious amounts of alcohol roughly every other page. As the reader, it becomes tedious to anticipate how Grossman will turn the latest plot arc into misery all around. Additionally, Grossman seems to intentionally write unrelated, usually pointless plot arcs that remain without conclusion at the end. Perhaps this is to loan the reader the despair the characters feel at living in a world where nothing means everything. If so, it worked – I spent most of my time reading this book despairing.