The Magicians

I really wanted to like this book, but I end up feeling rather conflicted about it.

The world it sets up is compelling, although the magical system is pretty much non-existent. Even though our “hero” Quentin Coldwater attends a magical school, we learn next to nothing about how spells work, how it's casted, and what potential it has. We're simply told that spells are cast, we see the effects they have, but we have no idea how it happens. For a book that has been, for so long, tagged as “Harry Potter for adults”, it sorely lacks the comprehensive world-building and deeply intricate magical system that Harry Potter has. Anyone who has even just watched the Harry Potter movies could probably name at least one or two famous spells (Alohomora? Expecto Patronum? Avada Kedavra?). Having finished this book, I struggle to remember any spell that was cast, and I probably couldn't explain coherently how magic even works in this world, except that only special people who can somehow wield it gets sent to Brakebills.

I was also terribly uninterested in the cast of characters. Eliot and Josh are interchangeable sex-driven jocks, Janet was just downright annoying and a one-dimensional archetype. Air-headed, endlessly promiscuous, and selfish, she's that stereotype of a high school cheerleader with no conscience, character, backstory, and simply exists to wreck some havoc in the main characters' lives and inject some sex into the plot line.

Quentin was worse. It felt like I had to sit through all that hormonal teenage whining of Order of the Phoenix again, but without any of the redeeming sparkle that Harry Potter generally offers. He was a main character that continually annoyed and annoyed and I could never find it in me to root for him at any one point. The lowest point of his character arc was when he blew up at Alice for sleeping with Penny, even though she had done it partly in retaliation at him sleeping with Janet. I kept waiting for Alice to round up on him and give him a taste of his own medicine, but she did nothing of the sort and that was so, so frustrating. Some parts of the story were just downright insulting to women, and while I get that the story is told through Quentin's eyes, I expected some sort of redemption at the end where he realised what a chauvinistic prick he's been - that never came and honestly, that really dampens my motivation to continue reading the trilogy.

For all its faults, I will say that the book got very engaging in the last third, and I found myself not being able to put it down. The general gist of the plot and the twists it involved were pretty satisfying, and it's only because of that, certainly not the characters, that I'd even consider continuing the trilogy.
, but that never came by the end of the book, which honestly makes me