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A review by sarahetc
The Magician King by Lev Grossman
3.0
Where to start with this one? With the caveats and addenda: it's the second of three, and the third is not out yet, so don't read this without reading the first one. And maybe read it pretty swiftly after you read the first one, because I read The Magicians a few years ago and while I understood what was happening, I think I might have understood more had I not waited so long between installments.
That said, these are some of the same characters and some of the same story, but The Magician King is definitely not The Magicians. And I think, having slept on it, that the story itself is very disappointing. I know that when I finished the book last night, tired enough to want to finish, but unsatisfied with the ending enough to want it to go on, I was deeply disappointed. Yet I would have read another 200 pages if there were that many to read. Grossman is a strangely compelling author that way.
Or to put it another way, I really don't like his universe. It's undefined, reactionary, seemingly incomplete and full of pouty brats that could get a lot accomplished if they just acted like the grown-ups they claim to be. Further, everyone's insistence that Grossman is the new C.S. Lewis just makes me rage. He may be Lewis-adjacent, but there is nothing Narnian about Grossman's agnostic existentialist onanism. I just cannot comprehend how someone can be the thematic heir to something one is so clearly contemptuous of.
And yet, it was still a good book, despite my personal discomfort with it. And that's because Grossman, for all his philosophical defects, is a writer's writer. Dude can find a voice and stick with it. He can find many voices and write them so intricately that they take on their own timbres in your head. His use of filler words in speech, like "like" is so well done it strikes you-- wait, did I just read someone saying something exactly like I would say it? It's the language, and the poor characters and their dire fates, that keep me coming back.
Structurally the book could have used a serious fine tuning, but at the same time, it worked. Grossman parses out Julia's story to create a sense of tension, and it works, but it was two steps forward, one step back, each time. Her story, and the overall story of the Fillorian/Nietherlands/Magic universe were obviously connected, but I think Grossman could have done it a little better, a little more poetically. I'm sure that, because we're largely limited to Quentin and Julia as narrators, we aren't supposed to actually see the whole picture or understand it. Nevertheless, there's a nugget of greatness there that could have really benefited from a serious polish.
Perhaps all will be clear when book three appears. I hope so. I'm sure I'll read it. Because for all my criticisms, it was a nice book I enjoyed reading.
That said, these are some of the same characters and some of the same story, but The Magician King is definitely not The Magicians. And I think, having slept on it, that the story itself is very disappointing. I know that when I finished the book last night, tired enough to want to finish, but unsatisfied with the ending enough to want it to go on, I was deeply disappointed. Yet I would have read another 200 pages if there were that many to read. Grossman is a strangely compelling author that way.
Or to put it another way, I really don't like his universe. It's undefined, reactionary, seemingly incomplete and full of pouty brats that could get a lot accomplished if they just acted like the grown-ups they claim to be. Further, everyone's insistence that Grossman is the new C.S. Lewis just makes me rage. He may be Lewis-adjacent, but there is nothing Narnian about Grossman's agnostic existentialist onanism. I just cannot comprehend how someone can be the thematic heir to something one is so clearly contemptuous of.
And yet, it was still a good book, despite my personal discomfort with it. And that's because Grossman, for all his philosophical defects, is a writer's writer. Dude can find a voice and stick with it. He can find many voices and write them so intricately that they take on their own timbres in your head. His use of filler words in speech, like "like" is so well done it strikes you-- wait, did I just read someone saying something exactly like I would say it? It's the language, and the poor characters and their dire fates, that keep me coming back.
Structurally the book could have used a serious fine tuning, but at the same time, it worked. Grossman parses out Julia's story to create a sense of tension, and it works, but it was two steps forward, one step back, each time. Her story, and the overall story of the Fillorian/Nietherlands/Magic universe were obviously connected, but I think Grossman could have done it a little better, a little more poetically. I'm sure that, because we're largely limited to Quentin and Julia as narrators, we aren't supposed to actually see the whole picture or understand it. Nevertheless, there's a nugget of greatness there that could have really benefited from a serious polish.
Perhaps all will be clear when book three appears. I hope so. I'm sure I'll read it. Because for all my criticisms, it was a nice book I enjoyed reading.