The Magicians

Would you be happy if you suddenly had everything you ever wanted? That question lies at the core of “The Magicians,” which is, if nothing else, a serious page-turner. It reads like Harry Potter, if Harry was an angsty teenager and these pages were his LiveJournal (Quentin is feeling: Dissatisfied). I felt that all of the rip-offs (sorry, “references”) were not exactly well-earned, despite the story's attempt to position itself for a more adult, post-YA reader base. The book's strongest points are curiously at odds, with Grossman's wonderfully inventive imagination constantly being desaturated by his dismayingly-realistic portrayal of a young adult in the throes of depression. The book's final chapters follow a fantastic plot twist with a extra-large heaping of indifference, and by the final pages I was left wondering why I should care about where the plot was going, when certainly no one else was.