The Magicians: A Review

Three thoughts about The Magicians by Lev Grossman:

1. The marketing materials for this novel suggest that it’s “Harry Potter goes to Narnia” — and that’s pretty much what it is, only with lots more drinking, a little more sex and about the same level of violence. And if that sounds really cool to you, then you’re going to like The Magicians. That’s also the book’s shortcoming: The hero is named Quentin Coldwater, and his journeys take him to a magical land called Fillory; he might as well be called Shmarry Shmotter, and he might as well be journeying to Shmarnia. Grossman’s influences are worn so heavily on his sleeve they nearly rip it off. He does a fine job of execution within those confines, but still. It’s not exactly the lit geek version of Gus Van Sant re-filming Psycho shot-for-shot, but it’s close.

2. There seems to be a growing literary genre of “adult versions of childhood literary favorites.” Right before reading The Magicians, I took on Joe Meno’s The Boy Detective Fails, which imagines an Encyclopedia Brown doppelganger as a suicidally depressed 30-year-old — he runs into the aging Hardy Boys as meth-addicted burnouts — trying to solve the mystery that is life. Grossman’s brother, Austin, got famous a couple of years ago with Soon I Will Be Invincible, which imagined the interior life of a Marvel-style supervillain. It’s a cute conceit, but it’s starting to wear out its welcome. Memo to adult-kid-lit authors: We were all kids once. We enjoyed it too. We even like to revisit old favorites now and again. But, uh, not this much.

3. There’s a hint at the end that Grossman wouldn’t mind this novel becoming a franchise of sorts. And while — again — he does fine within the limits he’s set for himself, all I can say is: I kinda hope not.