Have you ever read a book partly out of spite? Have you read a book and spent the whole time internally screaming at the author “I know you can do better than this?”
That’s how I feel about The Magicians.
Minor spoilers to come.
Look, I have precious little time to spend on reading these days. I want to savor the moments I have for books and stories and jump into every new title I pick up. Well, the good books would not be as good without knowledge of the disappointments out there, and The Magicians will make my next few reads even sweeter.
Here’s the thing. The Magicians has the potential to be really, really good. The main character, Quentin, is, in many ways, just like most of us: a reader longing to live in a world with magic, a kid who grew up with stories of Narnia and Harry Potter and knew there had to be more out there than this.
For Quentin, there is. He’s invited to his own world’s version of Hogwarts for college students and gets to study magic with other talented young people. Suddenly his world has gotten bigger, and all the things he’s hoped for are real.
So why is it all so boring? Quentin asks himself this question, but so does the audience. Our main character is incredibly oblivious and is quickly disillusioned and disappointed with every new development in his world. While it might be part of Quentin’s journey to learn that magic alone does not fix every problem and bring happiness to every life, that doesn’t mean the story’s audience also needs to be bored beyond belief.
Every potentially interesting plot point is either glossed over or described in so little detail that it loses any significance. Major questions crop up after ominous encounters or dangerous interactions. Intriguing peers with their own secrets create even more mysteries. Quentin doesn’t care about any of it and pays little attention. The world Grossman has created could be fascinating, but because we’re stuck with Quentin, we don’t see any of it. The closest we get is hearing about it all in an occasional conversation with Alice, a secondary character.
About two-thirds of the way into the book, Quentin’s time at school is over, and the real plot of the story begins. Just to reiterate: the real plot begins two-thirds of the way into the book. Part of me was just glad to finally see some payoff for the time I had invested into this achingly slow story, but part of me wanted to give up on it all if the whole thing would be this agonizing.
Once the action started, however, pieces began to fall into place. By pieces, I mean 2-3 previous conversations and a wee bit of foreshadowing made it pretty clear what would happen next. At least we were getting somewhere.
In the last 100 pages of the book, we finally reached the big villain battle. I was wonderfully surprised with this scene. Grossman crafted a truly evil, sickening villain, one that I haven’t seen the likes of in ages. The one previous scene we had with this character had left me on the edge of my seat, and after waiting so many pages for his return, I found the final reveal immensely satisfying. At what cost, however? This amazing villain who was actually scary had maybe fifteen pages of presence in the entire book. These 15 pages contained the best writing in the entire novel. Why, oh why, could the entire work not be like this?
Those few moments of genuine good character development, action, and mystery have, unfortunately, convinced me to read the next two books. I now know that Grossman is capable of good writing, of writing so good I’ll slog through pages and pages of garbage just to find out what really happens. I’ll deal with overly horny young-man-thoughts, characters who lack any personality besides drinking and whining, and excessively self-centered, stupid friend groups, as well as a whole lot of boredoms, in order to scratch an itch that will probably be over in 20 pages.
Oh well.
Can I say I recommend this? No. Do I enjoy the plot? Yes, when it actually shows up. Do I like the characters? Literally only Alice (and if you’ve read the book, you’ll know how that turns out).
Still, I guess I’m going full speed ahead with book two, so I won’t be burning my copy.
Happy reading everyone. Let’s hope the rest of my 2024 bookshelf isn’t this rough.
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