"The Magicians" by Lev Grossman

To anyone looking at the dates between this post and the last: this is not the first book I've read since October. I'm as good at maintaining a blog as I was at keeping a journal when I was a kid, but better at it than I was at feeding my goldfish. Some things slip through the cracks.

But that having been said, The Magicians was enough of a pleasure and a surprise that I just couldn't skip getting some thoughts down on paper. The Magicians is probably best summed up in this review snippet from George R. R. Martin: "The Magicians is to Harry Potter as a shot of Irish whiskey is to a glass of weak tea." It is definitely Harry Potter for adults, Narnia rated R.

Which is a good thing- a great thing. It gives you a world of magic and wonder and makes you beg to be taken home. The main character, Quentin Coldwater, is a dysphoric wunderkind-cum-magician who is anything but a hero. It's not that he's trying to be happy and not succeeding; he's miserable and in his misery wonders why he can't be happy, or whether happiness even exists. That kind of struggle is fascinating without magic, but with magic it's downright pyrotechnic.

What I like most about the book (aside from foul-mouthed college students placed in settings formerly reserved for the likes of Ron Weasley and the Pevensie children) is the way it treats the idea of magic. In the book magic is neither a blessing nor a personally transforming force. People still are who they are, with or without magic. And an important question is asked that always seemed to lurk at the edge of Potter-land and Narnia: if magic allows you to do everything, why do anything?

The characters- a motley crew of child geniuses who have all the social graces that child geniuses usually have- are a perverse joy. In unreal settings, they are like real people. Apparently there's no amount of magic in the world that will prevent people from being cruel, or cowardly, or downright twisted.

When I realized I wasn't at Hogwarts anymore: Quentin Coldwater, having just gotten into a fistfight, is lying in the infirmary with his former opponent. The dean comes, warns the boys to behave or face expulsion from the school, and leaves. So far, it's a scene right out of Harry Potter. And then Q turns to his schoolmate and says, "If you ever do anything that gets me sent back to Brooklyn, I will motherfucking kill you."

As I said, the book was a surprise, and it's the first book in a while that I stayed up reading into the wee hours. Some acquaintance with Harry Potter is probably a good thing, and I don't know if you'd get the full effect without having read the Chronicles of Narnia as well.