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The Magicians (Lev Grossman)
Jan. 11th, 2010 04:56 pmFirst, as a general public service announcement, I have been told that Lev Grossman is the brother of the sculptor mathematician Bathsheba Grossman, who I can without reservation say kicks total butt. Did I mention she is a mathematics sculptor? Swoon!
So, the book. I do believe this is the kind of book one cannot read (well, certainly not if one is me) without feeling the need to wave one's hands about wildly, pontificate about it for hours, and buttonhole random people to rant at about it... for while I had both good and bad feelings about it, they were pronounced feelings; no apathy here! (In this respect it was just about the opposite of Time Traveler's Wife, to which![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
julianyap compared it, my reaction to which was "Eh.") It's Contemporary New York Bored Teenagers Meet Harry Potter and Narnia, which pretty much sums up the book. As for the book itself, I really very much liked the first half (okay, the geese? awesome!), I hated and despised the third quarter (I might actually have given up reading it at this point were it not for promising I'd finish it) and thought the last quarter just about made up for the third quarter (I must say I didn't see any of that coming), except where it ended a little too abruptly. So overall, that's a win, I'd say.
Quentin, the main character, although he has his moments, mostly (starting on page 2 or so) makes me want to scream and beat my head against the wall -- I know it's intentional, but Quentin's anvilicious tenth iteration of "Why am I unhappy? Is it me, or is it just that the world sucks?" MADE ME WANT TO PUNCH HIM. (Why, yes, Quentin, it's you; and all of us know it.) (It does not help that I was never the sort of kid who wanted to escape into Fantasyland; yes, I read some books obsessively, but actually live there? Uh, no.) Alice is awesome, and I found myself surprised to rather like the Physical Kids. Brakebills (the Hogwarts analogue) I rather like, and Fillory (the Narnia analogue) makes me want to beat my head against the wall and beat the book against it (not that I would) - this, I think, is the biggest flaw in the book.
Let me, in fact, say more about Brakebills and Fillory under a cut.( Cut for meta-rants about fantasy; allusions to spoilers, but nothing specific. )
So, the book. I do believe this is the kind of book one cannot read (well, certainly not if one is me) without feeling the need to wave one's hands about wildly, pontificate about it for hours, and buttonhole random people to rant at about it... for while I had both good and bad feelings about it, they were pronounced feelings; no apathy here! (In this respect it was just about the opposite of Time Traveler's Wife, to which
julianyap compared it, my reaction to which was "Eh.") It's Contemporary New York Bored Teenagers Meet Harry Potter and Narnia, which pretty much sums up the book. As for the book itself, I really very much liked the first half (okay, the geese? awesome!), I hated and despised the third quarter (I might actually have given up reading it at this point were it not for promising I'd finish it) and thought the last quarter just about made up for the third quarter (I must say I didn't see any of that coming), except where it ended a little too abruptly. So overall, that's a win, I'd say.Quentin, the main character, although he has his moments, mostly (starting on page 2 or so) makes me want to scream and beat my head against the wall -- I know it's intentional, but Quentin's anvilicious tenth iteration of "Why am I unhappy? Is it me, or is it just that the world sucks?" MADE ME WANT TO PUNCH HIM. (Why, yes, Quentin, it's you; and all of us know it.) (It does not help that I was never the sort of kid who wanted to escape into Fantasyland; yes, I read some books obsessively, but actually live there? Uh, no.) Alice is awesome, and I found myself surprised to rather like the Physical Kids. Brakebills (the Hogwarts analogue) I rather like, and Fillory (the Narnia analogue) makes me want to beat my head against the wall and beat the book against it (not that I would) - this, I think, is the biggest flaw in the book.
Let me, in fact, say more about Brakebills and Fillory under a cut.( Cut for meta-rants about fantasy; allusions to spoilers, but nothing specific. )
