ilx thread about the magicians by lev grossman

i just read this today and am surprised there is not more talk about it on ilx--its a very ILX book, i think

its an oddly affecting little book. i finished it in about six or seven hours. the ending is horrible--really the last half or so of the book, with the exception of a couple scenes, is kind of directionless and flabby. and the whole thing feels oddly compressed: really it could/should be a trilogy (there are three distinct sections). and the characters are underdrawn/underdeveloped. (he does tap pretty well into the necessary teenage/20something melancholy, not that thats a difficult thing to do)

but! some of the setpieces are fantastic: the final bit in quentin's entrance examination; "the beast" in the classroom; alice in the "final battle," such as it is. and the way grossman writes about magic and spellcasting is quite good--its not an original idea of magic by any means but hes good at realizing it, and making it "feel" "real" (and fun!)

anyway im not sure why im starting this thread except to see if other people on ilx have read it and have smart things to say about it. since i am still trying to figure out what i thought.

i hated this, sorry

heh i kinda thought you would. so did my girlfriend.

but i want someone to explain to me why i *liked* it

why *i* liked it

the time magazine guy?

ya

this is terrible but as an adult version of harry potter it is basically exactly what i wanted it to be- mindless, entertaining and w/ weirdo narnia references

also the whole foxes fucking thing (foxes, right?) was so weird tho, and the evil demon dude was bizarrely out of place, but i didn't hate the sub bret easton ellis / jay mcinerney urban dissatisfaction tone as much as i would've thought. i've seriously thought about reading the sequel

like it just felt like such a gross, jackoff-y take on the genre and that it failed to deliver any of the 'traditional' genre pleasures (sloppy uninspired world-building, boring plotting) but its not particularly good as literary fiction either, the characters are lame and writing is fairly clunky

arguing against myself i think a large part of what i hated about the book is that i felt like hes been reviewed/praised in places hostile to traditional fantasy books as if his crappiness at reproducing the tropes of the genre somehow made him above them, which is obv p enraging

i want to read the sequel but im not spending $25 on the hardcover

hmm yeah i can see being annoyed with it as a fantasy nerd (which i no longer am)--i am also coming to this book 2 years late so im not really familiar w/ the press around it

ari hated the worldbuilding too which is making me question myself--i dont know, on a conceptual level i think it is uninspired but on a formal/technical level, like i said above, i think hes good at "getting" "magic." the last book i can think of that made me feel that way was probably wizard of earthsea. but i havent read fantasy in a while so maybe i just liked this cause ive been missing it!

i think it's best to read it as Harry Potter for Grownups expecting about as much literary value from it as you would from the Deathly Hollows

i can mail you the sequel if you want, i have a review copy of it im not going to read

i think part of why people like is that it is simplistic, partially as a deliberate throwback to older (and really, children's) fantasy that grossman loves and partly because i dont think hes capable of the baroque narrative complexity thats a trademark of contemp fantasy. his world is not very fleshed out but its a compelling/comfortable one

yeah sure--it reminded me of that "british families" nesbit/lewis axis of fantasy that i loved as a kid

im happy to wait on the sequel, the end was so... stupid that im not really psyched on reading what happens next

also the whole foxes fucking thing (foxes, right?) was so weird tho, and the evil demon dude was bizarrely out of place, but i didn't hate the sub bret easton ellis / jay mcinerney urban dissatisfaction tone as much as i would've thought. i've seriously thought about reading the sequel

― Mordy, Tuesday, September 13, 2011 10:29 PM (7 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

i thought it sucked that *SPOILER* "the beast" turned out to be martin chuzzlewit or whatever--liked that much better as a deeply creepy interlude instead of as a gotta-return-to-this foreshadowing thing

expected a lot more macinerny-isms based on the cover blurbs tbh! i guess that was the elevator pitch at penguin

the sequel is like $14 on amazon right now, max. was thinking about buying these for my gf who loves juve-lit fantasy stuff (potter, etc). would it work for her?

yeah, i think so, like mordy says its great for a weekend read, has some interesting things going on that never really get fleshed out properly

fwiw though my girlfriend is into YA fantasy stuff too and she hated this

ah, hm. well it's only like ten bucks, i'll grab it at powell's some day and surprise her and if she likes it she can go forth.

fwiwi max, your enthusiasm for the age of ice and fire stuff on the game of thrones thread led to me getting her the box set about a month ago and she just finished dance with dragons. so thanks for being my gf's book-pimp.

hahaha np, i feel embarrassed, you should be talking to actual fantasy nerds like lamp

lol well she's not really a fantasy nerd, more of a mnstrmr.

mostly she was all "god i need to find out what happens next on game of thrones!" and i was like "here is a solution, i heard it's a quick read."

yeah i am a horrible mnstrm dilettante too. i hope she enjoys the magicians, despite the naysayers i think its got enough good stuff to be worthwhile

well my girlfriend loved this and smashed through it in like 3 days and has about 50 pages left in the sequel and is now super depressed that there's nothing else to read, so i guess that worked out okay. any recommendations for someone who loved these books, the potters, song of ice and fire, etc.?

yeah f u lamp

She might like Patrick Rothfuss. He's got two books of a trilogy out that starts with "The Name of the Wind". Pretty Potteresque

obvious suggestion but anyone who loves this kinda thing and doesn't know le guin should check out the wizard of earthsea, stat.

this is a half-joking suggestion but the big thing potter and the magicians are drawing on besides lewis is e. nesbitt--five children and it for example--those are definitely "kids books" but theyre very funny and well-written

Oh yeah, she's very good. Read "The Enchanted Castle" a while ago, it's overly sentimental - and definitely for kids - but the part where the Ugly-Wuglies, the creatures made from umbrellas and broomsticks and coats and hangers, come alive, is wonderously unsettling.

i dug this, i liked the way it was just a really obvious heart-on-sleeve synthesis of cs lewis and harry potter and "the secret history" (which i think it bears the most resemblance to) and all that stuff. i liked the way the story came together but the very end reeked, and the sequel was... pretty bad.

never heard of this book, but Fox is going to try to adapt it to series

all u care about is the showbiz news angle :(

hey man, books only matter when they are made into tv shows or movies, because that's when i see them

wut so ilx is just all abt fantasy books now my god

*makes self at home again*

wut so ilx is just all abt fantasy books now my god

http://deadhomersociety.files.wordpress.com/2009/12/homergoestocollege4.png

loved this, loved the sequel

Oh hey thanks for the recommendations everyone! Totally forgot I bumped this! I think she's going to try the earthsea stuff next but I'll pass the other names on so she can look into everything.

i actually only learnt this book existed, like, a week ago. do i want to read it y/n

no

i cant bear to disagree with you about another book

a friend of mine who likes these made the sequel sound a lot better than the first one. or is it...a lot worse?

wut so ilx is just all abt fantasy books now my god

it's so weird how ppl who post on an internet message board might overwhelmingly be interested in genre fiction...

i really thought the sequel was everything everyone criticized the first for being (lame world-building, way too self-aware and winky)

I enjoyed this. I liked how the characters where genre-saavy and would make pop cultural refs as actual people would do in those situations.

I just finished the sequel. The fantasy world stuff was OK, no real advance on the first book. I did love the underground magic scene stuff though. I'll definitely be checking out the third when it's released.

i really dug both of these but i am also pretty much a fantasy dilettante. i actually got much more into the second book than the first

I haven't read this but his first book 'The Codex' was so horrible I threw it across the room when I was finished. But I love fantasy so I'm kinda torn about whether to check this out. He really made me kind of hate him for that first book.

I just finished this – couldn't believe how badly written it was.

BUT I think definitely worth picking up for the descriptions of magic (as a tedious, unreliable craft) and also the way in which it links the capacity for fantasy/magic to life ambitions in general. Made me think despite the fact the characters were totally unconvincing and uncharismatic (were they supposed to be, as cream-of-the-crop superbrains?)

One thing I thought was a real letdown was the fact that Fillory just turned out to be this place that worked like a storybook. Seeing as his subtext was basically about fantasy storytelling vs reality. Would have been much stronger IMO if he went deeper into the whole pointlessness/fakeness of the place. Like in Diana Wynne Jones' Dark Lord of Derkholm. Which I would recommend! Can't imagine where Grossman would go in the sequel...

I enjoyed this. I liked how the characters were genre-savvy and would make pop cultural refs as actual people would do in those situations.

About time someone upped Diana Wynne-Jones itt!

I'm ready to ditch this; they are all packing off to Fillory and it's just become a slog to read. But there's only 1/4 of it to go so I probably won't bail.

what should be the first dianna wynne jones i should read

howl's moving castle

thats not a book its a movie

no, its a very good book and a pretty good movie

i think youd really like the chrestomanci novels but theres some controversy over what order to read them in &c &c and i think howl's gives a really good sense of whats best in her work?

haha i think the firt half of that post reads a lot more schoolmarm-y than i meant it!!! anyway slox i can lend you howls if you want ill be in mtl soon

I think Deep Secret or the Dark Lord of Derkholm are maybe the most similar to the magicians. Howl's Moving Castle is so awesome though, i totally agree it sums up what she's all about, though at that point she's not playing about so much with fantasy convention as she does later on. Tough to pick a favourite though, they're all good. Would be really interested to hear people's favourites as I can never decide...

o ya when u comin' lampers

I think Deep Secret or the Dark Lord of Derkholm are maybe the most similar to the magicians.

^^

Fire & Hemlock & Archer's Goon are probably my two favourites, though they're at certain extremes of her work (Tam Lin for the former, council estate-ish shenanigans in the latter)

Hexwood strikes me as particulary Lamp-friendly tbh.

(shld I read the second Grossman book if I found the first a bit trying? OTOH I've successfully managed to avoid the dude's tedious crit/reviews/whatevs since The Magicians which IIRC cast a pall over my reading)

Just finished the first book and found it a real slog, but the last hundred pages were pretty good, when it's basically just a straight D&D dungeon novel. Grossman is actually pretty good at the action set pieces (I'm guessing he was a good DM) but mostly I found this dreadfully overwritten, just so much bland extraneous detail, it would have been much better at half (or even a third of) the size. Most of the time I couldn't suspend my disbelief, it just read like some random dude's basement fantasy novel.

As I am a sadist I will probably read the sequel, though. Or is there anything similar but better?

Also this! Looks pretty dreadful. They've aged up Quentin so he's a postgrad (!) rather than a high schooler.

http://www.youtube.com/QS_20JPaEnA

Sorry - this

www.youtube.com/watch?v=QS_20JPaEnA

Oof.

Well, I was dumb. This show is awesome!

Is it at all faithful to the book? The ads and clips I've seen make it look pretty different.

Not that faithful, but still pretty compelling, and way better than most stuff on SciFi. They are following Quentin and Julia at the same time, but that's a good decision IMO. First show in a while where I don't find myself picking up my phone in he middle of it.

Bleh. Okay I'll watch the show when it's on Netflix but it better be an improvement on the books.

it's even cornier than the books but i kinda enjoy that. definitely not Good by any measure

finally started watching this. I'd read the first book, which took me forever because I couldn't tell if I liked it or hated it; there were all kinds of issues I had with it, mainly that the characters (there were too many) weren't clearly defined enough outside of alice and quentin; I kept confusing janet and julia, for example. honestly I only half paid attention to the book and forced myself to finish it. But I like the show; they fixed a lot of the plot and pacing issues by not holdin goff on julia's story. and they renamed janet. but the girl who plays Alice bugs the fucking shit out of me; she has one expression, but I get the feeling I'm meant to be looking at her legs and not her face most of the time.

Wildly uneven. I feel like every other episode makes me throw up my hands, and then the next one pulls me back in.

this show's so campy, I love it.

I liked the books and hated the first season. They made a complete hash of the characters and plot. Does it get any better?

Haven't read the books but if you hated s1 I'd stay away.

First book was meh but the first season of the show is fun. Keeps distracting me that the main guy is so van der Beeky.

Riverdale is too campy, Sabrina beats you over the head with the Satanism is just like Christianity stuff, this is just right.

after being meh on most of s4 / finding it janky compared to s3, I gotta admit, they got me with that finale, which was both ballsy and surprisingly moving

Still haven't watched past s1. Maybe I should give it another try.

it's definitely got a ton of flaws, and it probably helps not to have read the books (which I haven't) but imo they get the sentimentality / genre thrills / loving parody balance mostly right, most of the time. it definitely helps when s3 ups the humor quotient a bit.

Yeah, the gap between the TV series and the books was pretty rough for me.

been watching this and i really like it!

never expected to say this about a television show, but the costuming is amazing

Aside from Quentin this might be the most attractive cast in TV history.

should have been a rick worthy spinoff

rewatching this series and i still love it

obviously the whole thing is that Q *isn't* the hero (respect to that actor for being a *fantastic* dork, tho)

margo is the actual hero imo