Book - The Magicians

So, when I was visiting with my friend, Laura, she basically forced this book on me. Im not complaining. For a complete fantasy geek like me, this was totally great. The premise isn't really new: a teenage boy who always wished there was something more to life finds out there is, and is accepted to a highly selective school of magic. Adventures ensue.

However, this book is more of a commentary on that almost universal desire than it is an actual representation of that desire. Or at least, that's what it is trying for, I think.




So, there is almost an annoying focus on how much the main character, Quentin, wishes and believes that there is more to the world than his mundane existence. At first, I was like, "Yeah, yeah, yeah. We get it." But once you get into the book, it's good that you understand the level of his obsession with a more adventurous and magical life.

The book heavily alludes to a series of books Quentin read as a child which are basically the Chronicles of Narnia. The main focus of his inability to accept the "regular" world is that he never stopped wishing that those books were real, and that "Fillory" which is the Narnia counterpart, was a place he could actually get to. Come to find out, he's right - shocker.

I don't know. Part of me wants to just say that the book was just kind of a good mishmash of a bunch of other fantasy books I love so much, but I really do think that this book was able to focus in on the interest in fantasy and magic that many of us still have, even as adults, and to kind of pick it apart. I think that in the end the book kind of advocates that the interest is good for you, but taking it to an obsession is unhealthy.

Anyway, in a very reading-heavy summer, I enjoyed this as much or more than everything else that I read for the first time this summer. The only thing I would say is that people who are very familiar with Chronicles of Narnia would probably enjoy it more than people who aren't.