I first read The Magicians and The Magician King in 2012, when I discovered the then incomplete trilogy in our school library. As a huge Harry Potter series and fantasy genre fan, I was thrilled to find a "grown-up" magicians world in which to immerse myself. Lev Grossman relies heavily on classic and popular fantasy writers, yet masterfully creates his own unique world. This fall, I was happy to re-read the first two books in preparation for reading the final installment of the trilogy, The Magician's Land.
In the trilogy, Grossman explores how flawed human beings would react when presented with the dangerous yet powerful potential of magic. Grossman's world is dark and filled with dynamic, flawed characters that make the reader want to root for them - in spite of their many, major mistakes. From college to adult life, Quentin Coldwater and his classmates learn about magic, then learn about how to live with magic. The answer is not always easy, but the journey is life-changing.
Highly recommended read for any C.S. Lewis, Harry Potter, or other high fantasy fans!
Notable quotes from The Magician King
And she had those things that one likes about magicians: she was disgustingly bright and rather sad and slightly askew. (32)
The beginning, the laying down of the fundamentals, was always the worst part, which he supposed was why so few people did it. That was the thing about the world: it wasn't that things were harder than you thought they were going to be, it was that they were hard in ways that you didn't expect. (97-98)
Genuinely social people never ceased to amaze him. Their brains seemed to generate an inexhaustible fund of things to say, naturally, with no effort, out of nothing at all. (206)
Magic: it was what happened when the mind met the world, and the mind won for a change. (232)
We can't all be heroes. Then who would the heroes fight? It's a matter of numbers really. Just work out the sums. (265)
Everything was chance and nothing was perfect and magic didn't make you happy, and Quentin had learned to live with it, which it turned out most people he knew were already doing anyway, and it was time he caught up with them. But you didn't forget that kind of happiness. Something that bright leaves a permanent afterimage on your brain. (291)
They were fixing the world. But Quentin preferred it broken. He wondered how long it would take. Years, maybe - maybe he could go home and not think about it and it would all happen after he was dead. But he wasn't getting that impression. Quentin wondered what he would do if magic went away. He didn't know how he would live in that world. Most people wouldn't even notice the change, of course, but if you knew about it, knew what you'd lost, it would eat away at you (...) Everything would simply be what it was and nothing else. All there would be was what you could see. What you felt and thought, all the longing and desire in your heart and mind, would count for nothing. With magic you could make those feelings real. They could change the world. Without it they would be stuck inside you forever, figments of your own imagination. (304-305)
Why should the gods be the only ones who got magic? They didn't appreciate it. They didn't even enjoy it. It didn't make them happy. It was theirs, but they didn't love it, not the way he, Quentin, loved it. The gods were great, but what good was greatness if you didn't love? (305)
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