There is a very important rule to writing fantasy or sci-fi, you can make up anything you like but once you’ve made it up you must remain true to it. In other words, you can create a world where everybody walks on their ears but you can’t have them walk on their nose half way through. And it is a rule Lev Grossman adheres to strictly in all three of his “Harry Potter And The Lower East Side” coming of age stories, The Magician. but there is another rule: make the fantasy land a place where the reader wants to live, and Lev doesn’t do that. The problem with the three Magician novels is it is hard to really get under the skin of the world he creates.
In the first book, a loner kid obsessed with the Narnia like stories about the magical world of Fillory is unable to gain the interest of the most beautiful girl in school Julia but is accepted into the magical High School on the outskirts of New York Brakebills. While there he makes friends with Elliott, Janet and other students, as well as Alice, the most gifted of the students. They discover Fillory is real and become Kings and Kings but disaster strikes and Alice becomes a non-human evil thing called a niffin.
In book two “The Magician King” magic groupie Julia attempts to become a part of the magic world and ends up raped by a Wolf God thingy and having her soul ripped out, before becoming a demi-god while young Quentin Coldwater mopes over Alice before saving Fillory and to pay the debt of his friend is banished.
When “the Magician’s Land” opens, Quentin is back on earth trying to steal a magical suitcase for a million bucks, after being fired from a teaching position at Brakebills, along with student Plum, a Granddaughter of the youngest of the children who first visited Fillory. Meanwhile, back in Fillory one of the two gods who rule the place inform King Elliott and Queen Janet, the world is coming to an end.
What ensues is an exciting ride to the end of the world and beyond all so Quentin can become a better man and Magician. It is a lot of fun, and in its own way it is serious: serious adult fantasy with a moral kick albeit one with a misogynistic after taste. But it isn’t more than that, really the story disposes itself in your mind as you read it; it is entertainment not art. I had read both of the preceding novels and had very little memory of them when I reached out for the final novel. I had to refresh myself. And the reason is, all these great and terrible things that happen don’t feel real enough to leave a mark on your memory. Author Lew Grossman can write a very good story and you might find yourself galloping through it but when it is over it is gone, and the dream, the fantasy, doesn’t have an afterglow.
The thing about fantasy is it must have a resonance and The Magician trilogy doesn’t have one, Quentin isn’t any sort of everyman. Compare Quentin to “I’m just” Harry Potter, and the handsome women magnet self absorbed asshole who would be mangod has NOTHING TO DO with even our fantasy of ourselves. Maybe it has something to do with Lev’s fantasies of himself. And the dream of a magical land, of Fillory itself, lacks the Christian myth with which Narnia resonated. Again, compare Aslan to the twin gods Ember and Umber and Fillory disappears before your eyes. Finally, compare Quentin to John Fowles Simon Urfe. Indeed, compare “The Magus” to “The Magician” and Lev’s oh so 21st century weaknesses are abundantly clear. It lacks stickiness, it is so busy but it doesn’t drag you to Fillory for all its gifts. there are too many rules, too much going place, it is like a decentralized government.
If you have never read the Magician trilogy you should, they are good reads, fun reads, adult reads with a real backbone. Just don’t expect any more than that.
Grade: B+