Simplified Series - The Magicians

Ooh, looks like someone rolled the dice after watching season one on Netflix.

My feverish pursuit of MOAR content brought forth this feature: Simplified Series. Here's the pitch: quick synopses (I'll try and keep them spoiler-free, but, you know, most of these are past the statute of limitations on spoilers) of the entries in a series followed by the reasons you should or shouldn't read it. This week:

The Magicians trilogy by Lev Grossman

Background Info: You may be familiar with Syfy's television program The Magicians, if so, you probably won't be surprised to find out that they're based on the Magicians trilogy by Lev Grossman. Both have their merits and demerits, but I'm not here to talk about the TV show (they're different, but not enough to make a worthwhile Oddaptations). I'm here to talk specifically about the books. And if there's one thing you need to know about these books before I summarize them, it's that all the characters are obsessed with a series of children's books about Fillory, a magical world/Christian allegory that is certainly not just Narnia with the serial numbers filed off to conform with copyright laws! How dare you even think that. It's a magical world ruled by a large mammal, with other talking animals, too, and there's a hostile nearby kingdom with different religious beliefs, and it's been previously been ruled by four human children who travelled there from England by walking through furniture and — oh my God! — it's actually just Narnia but with the serial number crudely changed so that a 0 is now an 8 or something. All right, kids, buckle yer seatbelts, strap on yer helmets, and slap on those safety goggles, it's time to summarize! 

The Magicians (2009): Eighteen-year-old sad-sack Brooklynite Quentin Coldwater has two things on his mind: his unrequited crush on his childhood best friend, Julia, and his imminent Princeton admittance interview. Uh-uh, don't tell mom the interviewer's dead! Don't worry, a sexy policewoman (so yeah, in book one Quentin's kind of a horndog and has a crush on every woman) hands him a manuscript that the interviewer probably meant to give him anyway, even better, it's the previously unknown sixth entry in the Fillory and Further series that Quentin still has a borderline unhealthy obsession with. This somehow leads him through a portal to the magic college Brakebills where he passes his entrance exam and proceeds to be a thoroughly unremarkable magic college student. Thrill along to adventures including, but not limited to, the time Quentin accidentally summoned a beast with too many fingers, the time Quentin and his new crush Alice have sex while transformed into foxes, or that time after graduation when obnoxious classmate Penny discovers that Fillory is real and insists the whole gang has to go there with him. Will the Physical Kids (that is, the Brakebills magicians specializing in physical magic) unravel the mystery of the Beast and his strange connection to Fillory? Will Alice be able to solve the mystery of what happened to her brother? Will Quentin manage to consistently screw everything up across an entire trilogy?

The Magician King (2011): Following the climactic events (and less climactic denouement) of The Magicians, Quentin finds himself one of the Kings and Queens of Fillory alongside co-rulers Elliot and Janet (two of Eliot's Physical kid buddies) and Julia, who's somehow learned magic despite failing her Brakebills entrance exam four years ago. One of the things that sets this novel apart from the previous volume is the structure, which alternates between Quentin and Julia's ocean voyage to collect back-taxes from Fillory's island colonies and the backstory of how Julia became obsessed with teaching herself magic and eventually joined a small cult of super-geniuses (Or is it super-genii? I guess that's why I wasn't able to join.) devoted to summoning a benevolent mother goddess. Will Quentin somehow donk everything up again and need to find a way back to Fillory from Earth? Will the Dragon-studying, Australian magician Poppy turn into a dark horse candidate for your new favorite character? Will perennial bummer Penny turn up once again and turn out to be even more of a wet blanket?

The Magician's Land (2014): Following the climactic events of The Magician King, Quentin pulls a Welcome Back, Kotter and takes a teaching job at Brakebills. Unfortunately, when the niffin (a sort of magic ghost that you turn into if you use too much magic) of his ex, Alice, shows up and nearly kills a student involved in a prank gone wrong, both Quentin and the student, Plum, are kicked out. They meet up again when they're recruited for a magical heist by a talking bird. As heists tend to do, this one goes awry, but not before one of their fellow heisters steals a god-killing blade, leaving Quentin and Plum with nothing but a magic book detailing how one of the children who had previously visited Fillory resolved to stay there forever. Meanwhile, back in Fillory, Eliot and Janet embark on a quest. What kind of quest? The save the world and magic kind of quest. Turns out that the last of Fillory's twin ram gods is dying, which would be bad for Fillory's long term survival. Will Quentin and Plum make an ill-advised attempt at performing one of the dead magician's spells? Will Fillory and magic come to an end? Will achieving enlightenment only make Penny even more obnoxious?

Why should you read the Magicians trilogy? You always wanted to know what the Harry Potter series would be like if Harry was even more of a morose bastard. . . J/K, kinda. Lev Grossman mostly succeeds at creating a wish fulfillment fantasy for adults by making it about giving up childhood obsessions. Well, that's not quite right, it's more that they deal with themes of putting away childish things while still remembering what made them magical to begin with. His magic world is populated by magicians who (like the wizards of Adventure Time) are afflicted with madness and sadness and find that magic doesn't do much to fix either. They're pretty good books. That said. . .

Why shouldn't you read the Magicians trilogy? You don't like stories about people wallowing in their own misery? Look, the books can be pretty depressing, and while the ending is optimistic, the books go to some dark places. For example, there's a character whose soul is literally raped out of her by a mischief god. So you know, if that's not something you want to read, I don't blame you. And honestly, I'd say that storyline is handled a bit clumsily. So, like most books, these aren't perfect. However, overall Grossman does a good job of writing a contemporary fantasy series.

Links:

So, yeah, the show on Syfy is actually pretty good. They change Brakebills to a grad school, and make Penny more abrasive than obnoxious, among other changes. Anyway, here's the trailer.