Title: The Magicians
Author: Lev Grossman [Website] [Twitter]
Genre: Young Adult, Fantasy
Publisher: Viking Press
Format: Audio
Source: Purchased
Parental Advisory: language, sex, drugs, alcohol

“She didn’t answer, just stared up angrily at the hazy moon.  There were tears on her cheeks.  He realized that he had just casually put into words what was probably the overwhelming question of Alice’s entire existence at Brakebills.  It occurred to him, long after it should have, that he wasn’t the only person here who had problems and felt like an outsider.  Alice wasn’t just the competition, someone whose only purpose in life was to succeed and by doing so subtract from his happiness.  She was a person with her own hopes and feelings and history and nightmares.  In her own way she was as lost as he was.”

Summary (from the publisher):
Intellectually precocious high school senior Quentin Coldwater escapes the boredom of his daily life by reading and re-reading a series of beloved fantasy novels set in an enchanted land called Fillory.  Like everybody else, he assumes that magic isn’t real — until he finds himself unexpectedly admitted to a very secret, very exclusive college of magic in Upstate New York.

After stumbling through a Brooklyn alley in winter, Quentin finds himself on the grounds of the idyllic Brakebills College for Magical Pedagogy in late summer.  There, after passing a gruesomely difficult entrance examination, he begins a thorough and rigorous education in the craft of modern sorcery, while also discovering the joys of college: friendship, love, sex and booze.  But something is missing.  Even though Quentin learns to cast spells and transform into animals, and gains power he never dreamed of, magic doesn’t bring him the happiness and adventure he thought it would.

After graduation, he and his friends embark on an aimless, hedonistic life in Manattan, struggling with the existential crises that plague pampered and idle young sorcerers.   Until they make a stunning discovery that propels them on a remarkable jouney, one that promises to finally fulfill Quentin’s yearning.  But their journey turns out to be darker and more dangerous than Quentin could have imagined.  His childhood dream is a nightmare with a shocking truth at its heart.

Opinion:
This ain’t you’re teenager’s magical wizard!  There’s drugs and sex (of the orgy variety in some places) and all sorts of nefarious activity. While it will certainly appeal to a young adult market it is decidedly geared toward the adults as well.

To start, the pace of this story was leisurely to say the least.  Not a quick read by any stretch of the imagination.  At 16 cd’s I knew it was going to be one long listen.  I’ll add, it started out so slowly that I had thoughts of abandoning it.  Had I not been listening to it on audio I suspect I may actually have put it aside.  Thankfully, Quentin got to Breakbills just as I was getting bored and the story began to move a bit more swiftly.

But still, it was long.  Too long in my opinion.  There was too much time spent in Breakbills, a good portion of it idle time with very little action.

Now, I haven’t read many books centralizing around this magic wizard theme but I have to imagine that The Magicians falls pretty closely in line with the others in some ways.  There is a normal boy who learns he has magical abilities, he goes off to school with other mystical types to learn about said powers, he gets embroiled in some sort of other-worldly situation and they all work together to overcome adversity.   Not hugely original in the grand scheme of things I think.  But, it worked, mainly because even though there were similarities I imagine there were an equal number of (if not more) differences that set it apart.

The crux of the story is about Quentin’s journey from boyhood dreams to adult realizations and everything in between.  I was surprised that it was far more character based than plot driven.  Don’t get me wrong, there’s definitely a story here, but man did Grossman explore the crap out of the characters.  Particularly Quentin.  Ordinarily I’m not a girl who enjoys a story that is so overwhelmingly about character exploration but I’ll say that it worked here.  Knowing Quentin’s inner workings, the tickety-tock of it all, made the story that surrounded it much more worthwhile.

Oh and the secondary characters.  Totally made the story.  There were loads of people milling around both at home and at Breakbills.  Then, add in all the different elements of Fillory and boy oh boy there was no shortage of people (or things) to follow around the pages.  The core group of Magicians worked very well.  They were nerdish, quirky and each one of them individual.  Quite the gang they were and they totally brought a good light-hearted break to some of the heavier parts of the story.  My particular favorite was Josh, he seemed to be the bumbling idiot of the group but was so endearing and added a really funny voice to the story.

Because I listened to the audio version I would be remiss if I didn’t speak to the narration.  Thank god for Mark Bramhall. Had this book had a lackluster narrator it would have definitely been a loser.  There were so many characters and voices to preside over that it required someone with the ability to create distinct tonal differences.  Sure, there were some characters that sounded very similar — so much so I sometimes lost who was talking — and here and there the voice of a character slipped from one accent to another (most notably Anais who sounded French one minute and Russian the next) but all in all Bramhall did a spectacular job with a HUGE book.  I hope when the follow-up is made they bring him back in to read again.

Speaking of the follow up, the end of The Magicians definitely left the door open to revisiting Quentin again.  I hear that Grossman is indeed working on just that.  I suspect I’ll endeavor to read it, though I also suspect I’ll do so in audio again.  It’s wordy fare that just moves better that way.

I say, if you like in-depth character analysis and some mystical and magical plot lines give The Magicians a go.  If you tend to like something a bit more simple this may not be your bag.