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The Magicians (Magicians Trilogy) by Lev Grossman

The Magicians is a book that will take you by surprise. In a genre populated by epic fantasy quests and magical swords, by overused cliche's, thin characters and even thinner plots, this book is an ode to something more profound, something more substantial; it's fantasy that's decided to grow up; fantasy where there is not always a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, fantasy where heroes don't always win and if they do come out on top, they sometimes suffer from depression and post-traumatic stress.

This is part Harry Potter on downers and suffering from clinical depression, part Alice trapped in a Wonderland gone nightmarish wrong. At its heart, the Magicians is really the story of a boy-become-man struggling to give the world meaning in a world that has no meaning.
What does this all mean? The Magicians is fantasy that's more than fantasy.


If you are looking for a happy-go-lucky read where the world is saved and everyone finds true love and does a victory dance into the sunset, you may want to skip this one. For the rest of you who want to taste something different (and this one has a lot of zing to it folks), Lev Grossman's The Magicians delivers.

The Magicians takes a number of children's classics such as Harry Potter, Chronicles of Narnia, Alice and Wonderland and transfigures them, moving them from the simple innocent child fiction into the adult land with adult problems to deal with.

This is a series of three books and you absolutely must read all three books before you start casting your judgment (don't post how much you hated the first book unless you've read all three books). By the end of the third book (which was just released 2014), the full scope of the events in the first and second books are bought to a close and the circle completed.

This is a series where each book becomes better, where the characters grow, make mistakes, more mistakes, then learn. It's quite remarkable, really, by the end of the tale you feel like you have been there and back again (and you have)  you've left the Shire had a grand adventure, and returned only to find it's not the same because the characters are not the same, having learned and grown up.

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