Of course, it isn’t-and not just because writers like Patrick Rothfuss (c’mon, book three!) and George R. The entirety of protagonist Quentin Coldwater’s journey is supposed to transcend the familiarity of its particulars. The goal, it seems, is to be so derivative, so plagiaristic in its parts, that their sum somehow circles back in an Ouroboros of meta-magic and achieves a kind of renewed originality. And just in case you still don’t get it, he drops allusions to these works throughout, from specific (Rowling’s "muggles," for instance) to structural (boy-wizard trope, Lewis’s Narnia). If the references to a school for magic and a mystical land didn’t already tip you off, Grossman’s trilogy plays as an epic riff on the entire genre. But with Grossman, the comparison is even more unavoidable than usual. White, Le Guin, Feist, Pratchett, Pullman, Alan Moore, and so on, as well as some notable non-fantasists, like the great Evelyn Waugh). Rowling, and just about every other fantasist who ever was (T. It was literally called "A Short Cut to Mushrooms." Silly hobbits.Ī comparison to Tolkien is inevitable for any fantasy writer-as is a comparison to C. Compare this to, say, Tolkien, who once devoted a whole chapter to finding mushrooms. Much later, another character rebuilds a dying land in eight paragraphs. So you see, it is possible.) There’s a scene in the first half of The Magician’s Land where a senior at the Brakebills school for magic goes down a wrong corridor and travels to other times and dimensions, encounters a demon in a mirror, trips multiple alarms, and gets herself expelled-all in a dozen pages. (Contemporaries, observe: All three Magicians books tap out at around 400 pages. He can weave more swords and sorcery into a few pages than some writers can into a whole goddamn thousand-page book.
Grossman, who works by day as the book critic for Time magazine, is enormously talented. But a conclusion to what, exactly? Is the saga a truly great, timeless classic, worthy of shelf space alongside the masters? They! The ancient beings who live underground and make these sorts of proclamations.) That first part is hard to dispute-it is a pretty perfect conclusion.
#The magicians land lev grossman series#
The Magicians Land is an intricate and fantastical thriller, and an epic of love and redemption that brings the Magicians trilogy to a magnificent conclusion, confirming it as one of the great achievements in modern fantasy.What are we to make of Lev Grossman’s Magicians trilogy? Its final installment, The Magician’s Land, came out in August, and reviews glowed bright, almost embarrassingly so: They’re calling it the perfect conclusion to one of the great fantasy series of our time. But all roads lead back to Fillory, where Quentin must face his fears and put things right or die trying. He uncovers buried secrets and hidden evils and ultimately the key to a sorcerous masterwork, a spell that could create a magical utopia. His new life takes him back to old haunts, like Antarctica and the Neitherlands, and old friends he thought were lost forever. Eliot and Janet, the rulers of Fillory, embark on a final quest to save their beloved world, only to discover a situation far more complexand far more direthan anyone had envisioned.Īlong with Plum, a brilliant young magician with a dark secret of her own, Quentin sets out on a crooked path through a magical demimonde of gray magic and desperate characters. Meanwhile, the magical barriers that keep Fillory safe are failing, and barbarians from the north have invaded. But he cant hide from his past, and its not long before it comes looking for him. With nothing left to lose he returns to where his story began, the Brakebills Preparatory College of Magic. Everything he had fought so hard for, not to mention his closest friends, is sealed away in a land Quentin may never again visit. He has been cast out of Fillory, the secret magical land of his childhood dreams that he once ruled.
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