Book Review - The Magicians

The Magicians The Magicians by Lev Grossman


My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I discovered Grossman from his writing for Time magazine. Very funny dude. I've also followed his stories of promoting this book via Twitter. I'm pretty sure I would enjoy hanging out with him. I know we'd have lots of books to talk about because it looks like we grew up reading the same stuff.The Magicians weaves elements from Fantasy and Fairy Tale to tell the story of Quentin, a very smart kid obsessed with books about one family's children who enjoy adventures in a magical land. Quentin gets sidetracked on his way to his verbal interview at Princeton and finds himself attending a college for Magicians instead.

This is not your childhood's Chronicles of Narnia nor your child's Harry Potter, exactly. There's the typical excess sex, drugs and alcohol of college life, the hubris of young adults and the conviction that the young have that nothing bad can ever happen to them. In this story, the students' actions lead to bad stuff happening. Quite a bit, actually.I really enjoyed this and I'm adding Grossman's first book, Codex to my To-Read list.

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