Reading: The Magicians by Lev Grossman

I had been meaning to read this book for a while. Well, ever since review called it the grown-up Harry Potter. I am on board when Harry Potter is mentioned.

Well now that I've finished the book I'm not so enthusiastically running out to start the next one. Let me explain. It follows Quentin Coldwater, who out of the blue is invited to study at Brakebills, a magicial college. This is everything he believes he could ever want and is as close as he can imagine going to the magical world of Fillory (a.k.a. Narnia). Structurally, the story is divided into for "books," each following a different period of time in Quentin's life. I won't go into specifics because I don't want to spoil too much.

The geek in me loved all the little references to Harry Potter and Narnia and anything vaguely nerd culture. But it seemed to do this only to point out that it wasn't like that. It was strictly, "this is what happens at Hogwarts, but that's now how it works here at Brakebills." I guess I  can appreciate that Grossman was trying to set his world apart from others that came before him. But while reading this, I couldn't help but think every once in awhile "Why am I not rereading Harry Potter right now?" Like it was a struggle trying to get through some parts of the book because it was either a) boring or b) annoying, especially Quentin.

God, I did not like Quentin at all. He was just so whiny and petulant. Grrrrargh, I don't know how to put into words my dislike towards him. And I understand that he represents today's privileged youth after college, questioning "what will I do now?".  But that's sort of the reason why I don't watch HBO's Girls because I don't need to watch something that is going on around me. I could just pay attention to the real world going on around me for that. I read fiction like this to escape the everyday life.

The more that I think about it, I guess I'm also like those who leave Brakebills. I had such high expectations for this book and now I'm just complaining about it because it didn't live up to what I had thought and I'm unsure if I want to read the next book. I mean I will read the next book because I like finishing things. Also because in the last 30 pages he tried to rush and set up a sequel with very little explanation and I just like knowing things.

For more (professional) reviews, see one of the links below:
[ A.V. Club ] [ Washington Post ] [ NY Times ]