The Magician King: A Novel (Magicians Trilogy)

I really like this series! My sister turned me on to them and I've had a hard time putting it down, even when its very late and I have plenty of other things to do. My sister bought me the first two books for Christmas, but I went ahead and downloaded THE MAGICIAN KING to my Kindle so I could read it whenever I get an extra minute or two. Again, I highly recommend this series.

Both books in the series were well written and creative without being pretentious. Weeks after reading it, parts of the story, and phrases come back to me and it seems more real, more like an old fable than a newly written book. I liked both, perhaps the second one even more than the first.

Lev Grossman has a terrific ability to describe the magic so that you can almost see it and feel it. He also draws out the consequences of the suspension of disbelief - necessary for this sort of fiction - to its logical conclusions, in ways that seem neither forced nor contrived. His stories are seamless, and compelling.

I love this series and this one did not disappoint! I was pleasantly surprised with the ending that left me screaming out loud for Quentin Coldwater, although I won't spoil it with why! I'm now on book three and I highly recommend this series to anyone, fantasy lover or not.

I didn't like this series until halfway through the the first book. Now I'm hooked!! I can't wait to read what happens next, and finally a completed series that I don't have to wait half a decade to find out the end of. Give it a try, you may struggle through the beginning of the first book, but you'll be glad you did.

I ordered this a few months ago.

It arrived earlier than expected, within 4-5 days, very nicely packaged and undamaged. No complaints at all.

The book itself I got for my boyfriend which he is constantly into it. (:

As is happened with the first book, Grossman hits the reader with his direct style, and he manages to depict an intense, deep and dark story, even more thrilling than the original. The characters are deeper, more adult and, by far, more human.

Well done, Lev!!

This book is about as good as it gets. I imagine that the people who gave it one star really felt what they felt -- but I just can't imagine what they were unhappy about -- and my bet is that you won't be able to either. The lead review is right on target.

I must admit, I didn't finish the book. The descriptions of magic were truly magical and absolutely wonderful, but I had to wait too long to get to them. The story idea of kids in a school for magic is a complete rip off, had the tone of a teen book to me, and was not worthy of my time.

A longer review to follow, but I wanted to say immediately that while I liked The Magicians (Grossman's first book in this series) a great deal, I love The Magician King. I think of this as the "Book of Julia" because it revisits Julia (a minor character in the first book) and explores how she became a powerful magician in her own right -- and a queen of Fillory. This book also has a richer mythopoeic component than its predecessor. I highly recommend it!

The concept that drew me to these two books was that they're an adult literary treatment of a concept that has largely been addressed with either young adult or pulp adult writing and characters. I feel like The Magicians squeaked by in meeting that criteria (although the moral center did not hold). The Magician King does not. I think this does work as pretty good fantasy. There's a good deal of inventiveness, plot twists based on the created rules of the world, characters we basically care about. There's one very high quality creation in the gods which is severely underexploited. But overall, it's not great fantasy.

But it is definitely not literary. The quality of the writing has dropped significantly from the first book, and a great deal of it seems plain lazy. I don't think any of this would bother me except for the fact that I think Lev Grossman has the chops to do this right. There have been astounding sequences - e.g. Brakebills South, and I think that LG has brought a character to the page that is new to literature but common to life - nose to the grindstone type, with the realistic tradeoffs that are made to become good at something. There's a working metaphor with magic and writing that is working under the surface that he is able to tap to create a credible portrait of a teenager learning to become a powerful magician. That's no mean feat.

The book that comes to mind, and that I'm probably unfairly expecting, is The Corrections. The Corrections starts in the slang and quotidian of the suburbs, but elevates that life to literature. I think part of the reason that this works is that The Corrections knows what it is: literature. There's a burden on it to raise and explore a moral question, and if not to answer it, then to suggest why the answer is difficult to arrive at.

The Magicians starts in that vein, and there are legitimate moral questions to address: how do you live life without magic, once you know it exists? That's a fantastic metaphor, and something that almost all of us address in our lives when we see people operating in a profession that we are unable to break into. How many actors are there trying to get a movie? How man movie stars that want to direct? A lazy example, but we all have them, barring perhaps a very few that succeed on their own terms in their chosen field.

/***************Spoiler Alert*********************************/
Does the Magicians end on that note and address the question, no, it steps away by whisking Quentin into magicland as soon as the answers get difficult. Does the Magician King? Maybe, but credits roll immediately, so there's no exploration of a viable answer. Every time somebody almost loses magic, they get it back, so the author himself seems to be having a hard time getting off the (magic) sauce. Good luck for his characters.

There's some sort of moral teaching about sacrifice and maturity, but that doesn't rise to the level of interesting for me. More importantly, it's not a question that has to be answered with this world, magic doesn't have that much to do with it. You could bring up the same thing in a GI Joe cartoon if you left out the parachutes.
/**************End Spoiler Alert*************************/

In the end, I feel like these books don't know what they want to be. When there's a difficult moral question, magic resolves it or alleviates it. When there's a time to dazzle with imagination, there are ironic borrowings (sure, they're allusions) to suggest that the book is a literary commentary on the genre. In the end, neither the criteria for literature or fantasy are quite satisfied. It works as decent fantasy with some gen x, bordering on y material, but I'm too old to be reading something like that, and in the end, I'm a little embarrassed I spent my time this way.

Man, I thought "The Magicians" was insufferable. Same deal here. I couldn't stand Quentin, and I outright despised Julia (who ends up being the focus of 1/2 the book, what?). The author called up a lot of deus ex machina. The ending was complete nonsense. BUT I LIKED IT, because it was unexpected (and satisfying to me b/c I dislike Q).

NEVERTHELESS, I *would* recommend this book to a friend. If you're a total fantasy nerd, just read it. You might hate yourself for it, but admit it, you've read way worse.

After the first book I expected something special. So far, not so specal. I know the publishers prefer books that continue on the story from a previous volume but I find this simple and unimpressive. Magicians was dynomite.

As much as I liked the first book in this series, I disliked this one. Its hasty and seemingly unedited prose wanders as aimlessly as its titled magician king character and suffers from A lack of a concise understanding of what story it is trying to tell and how it is trying to tell that story. The rhythm and feel of the 1st book's prose is absent here, and by the middle it is difficult to rationalize why you are pushing forward through the text, as characters assert teletubbies are real and magic is just a google search away. I was thoroughly disappointed by this follow up and would caution paying for the title before skimming through some middle chapters (the first chapter was very good and not a reliable indicator for what is to come.)

Great book. For once, not a happy-ever-after fairy tale with only perfect people who always make the right decisions. The characters in this book are refreshingly human, even though they have inhuman powers.

The book came quickly and in great shape. So far I'm about 50 pages in and I keep waiting for it to get better. He really took my breath away with the Magicians, and this one is really failing to live up to those expectations.

Ordered this for my HP Printer. I was a bit reluctant at first as a warning message popped up alerting me that they were not HP ink cartridges. I continued to use them and have had no issues whatsoever. I am very happy with this as it is a great cost savings and works perfectly with my printer.

...Because it's just such a huge step down from the first book. Yes, the first book was quite obviously in large part an effort, inter alia, to deconstruct/reinterpret the famous Narnia books, but Grossman was largely successful in keeping this reasonably organic to the novel. That way, you could appreciate that aspect if it appealed to you but the narrative still functioned as an engaging and original story in its own right. Here, however, Grossman's storytelling feels rather more too-frequently derailed by his desire to go out of his way to show how HIS fantasy is just oh so terribly LITERARY, don't you know - not like that other stuff. This is in definite and unflattering contrast to a writer such as Gene Wolfe, who is simply good enough to tell fantasy stories with literary aspects and elements organically woven into them. Grossman generally seems more to try to thrust them into his narrative whether they quite fit or not; hence my impression that he appears to be driven by some kind of compulsion to prove something in doing so. Regardless, these inorganic and not infrequently rather unbelievable (and don't give me that "but it's fantasy!" crap - fantasy has as much of an obligation to remain internally consistent as any other fiction) intrusions of pretension certainly detract from the narrative and generally render the book a far less worthwhile read.

Grossman's unsubtle disdain for Christianity is put on flagrant display as well. As I generally dislike it when authors editorialize on religion (why should the characters get to obtain answers with so much more certainty than all the rest of us? and why - oh, just by pure coincidence most likely - do those answers turn out to be so generally consistent with the author's own apparent views on the merits of religion?), this did not aid in endearing the book to me either. At times Grossman's approach to the topic felt so ham-handed I felt for a few moments a bit as if I was reading some kind of mirror-universe atheist version of the Left Behind books. I don't think Tim LaHaye (and is there another guy? I don't recall, and can't be bothered to look it up) ought to be taken as a literary role model - not even as an inverse. Overall just a tremendous disappointment that I regret wasting my money on purchasing. Steer clear unless you're as ready to mistake wankery for quality as Grossman is.

I enjoyed the first book despite its shortcomings and looked forward to reading this sequel. I even paid full price for both. Now that I have read the sequel, I can't say that I feel the same way about its inevitable follow-up.

We start with Quentin and the three people who picked him up at the end of the last book (Julia, Eliot, and Janet) well established as the rulers of Fillory. Like Narnia, which Grossman rips off even more blatantly in this book than he did in the last, Fillory has two kings and two queens. We skipped over exactly why or how this came to be and no explanation is offered in this book. We DO get a detailed explanation for how Julia became a magician without an acceptance to Brakebills. The story is interesting, but I disliked it for personal reasons. I just take umbrage with any person, fictional or non, who blames their failures on other people. Julia's story is filled with whining about how she deserved to get into Brakebills and she blames everyone except herself for flunking the exam that got her rejected in the first place. INCLUDING QUENTIN, which suddenly becomes a major plot point in the last ten pages of the novel. And since Grossman never establishes that she even WANTED to be a magician in the first place, her attitude is even harder to deal with. Why is she so determined to get into a world she never had much desire to join in the first place? She just wants it because she can't have it. And [BIG SPOILER ALERT!!] that story ends with a crazy rape scene that just pops out of the blue with zero warning and zero context or relevance. There's much to be said about a male author who subjects a female character to rape and then tries to use that as some kind of empowerment.

So first the story is Quentin wanting a quest or some adventure to take him out of his palatial boredom. That veers into Quentin getting moved back to Earth by accident, then trying to get back. Once he gets back, he joins a quest that's nearly over, we get one confusing "action" scene that is honestly very poorly written, and then we learn about a huge, end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it danger 3/4ths of the way through the book. Luckily, this danger can be solved by completing the quest THEY'RE ALREADY ON. And then Surprise!, fifty pages later, quest's over and the danger is gone. WE SEE NO ACTION in this book except for the aforementioned bad scene. There are DRAGONS in this book and it's STILL BORING!! How does that happen? Something somewhere went seriously wrong in the writing of this novel. My guess is that Grossman decided to rip off "The Voyage of the Dawn Treader" practically verbatim then wimped out of that and cobbled together another story to staple onto that one instead. If you're going to rip something off, just go for it! Do it all the way, or don't do it at all. Like the crew of the Dawn Treader, the characters here sail east to various islands looking for lost things that are scattered across the Eastern sea. As they go, the sea gets more shallow and the sun gets more intense, until they reach a place where the world ends. UNLIKE Dawn Treader, we don't actually get to see most of the islands they visit, even though they're named on the map in the front and back of the book. Eliot sums them all up in once sentence for Quentin, and we move right along to the END of that story. In another scene, a character returns to announce that there will be a battle waged between Gods and magicians, and that DRAGONS are helping them fight it. All these dragons burst out, then Quentin leaves to go do something else. WE DON'T GET TO SEE THE DRAGON FIGHT.

What kind of a writer comes up with or rips off awesome ideas for a story, then FAILS to actually WRITE ABOUT THEM?? Why the heck did he choose to ONLY write about the boring parts of this journey? I would have preferred to follow them on their sea adventure and have Quentin show up and briefly explain the boring crap he did on Earth while everyone else was having a good time. Quentin simply isn't an interesting enough character to follow unless he's doing something pretty cool. I didn't realize that in the last book because he WAS doing something that was interesting to read about, and Grossman wrote it pretty well. That is not the case here.

Sorry there are so many spoilers in this review, but I just don't know how to explain my frustration with it without spoiling things a bit. And summing up that frustration in words was harder than I thought it would be. The bottom line is that Grossman had all the plot elements and ingredients to make this book good, but he mixed them all up and told them in the wrong order and in the wrong way, so all we're left with is a peek at what the book COULD have been if he'd handled it better. It's a mess, is what I am trying to say. It's just a really complete and total mess. VERY disappointing.

Based on how things "end" there will have to be a sequel to this. I won't be reading it unless I get a free copy and have a lot of free time.

I had stumbled upon the ongoing original Sy-Fi series, The Magicians, based on “The Magician’s Land.” The series is still progressing at least to season 3.

I never took the time to read “The Magician’s Land.” However, I have had opportunity to read this book, “The Magician King.” It is the second in the trilogy and you need to read the first, first, to pick up on the references.

I have to admit I did not go past chapter two. I found the writing tedious and full of potty mouth. There is even an off-color joke about Fillory Clinton.

The characters do too much sitting around and arguing to on point.

I think I will give up the TV series after reading this book.

This is the book I wanted when I read "The Magicians!" The magic is more interesting, and all the complaints I had about Brakesbills and Quentin are discussed, interwoven in Julia's POV. I found Julia's story very compelling, and Quentin got the chance to grow up a little. I also liked the immersion into Fillory, the ways it's based on Narnia without the religious connotations. I was lukewarm about the series after the first book, but this second book redeemed it!

Still not my favorite series but this one was better than the first. The storylines are better, the pacing didn’t leave huge gaps of boredom in the middle and there is a little character growth.

*** “You didn’t get the quest you wanted, you got the one you could do.” ***

Quentin, I think the best way to describe him is as someone who is never happy with what he has and always envious of what someone else has. He is your friend at a restaurant that takes the longest time to decide what to order and then complains when the dinners come that he should have got what you were having. Throughout this entire book he never appreciated any of the things he had. He is a king of Fillory, his dream come true and still he isn’t happy. He is melancholy and just waiting for something interesting to happen. This book is pretty much him learning that you don’t know what you’ve got until it’s gone.

For me the thing I liked was Julia’s journey. She didn’t get into Brakebills but knew there was magic out there. I found her journey as a hedge witch to be quite an interesting and difficult tale.

*** “That was the thing about the world: it wasn't that things were harder than you thought they were going to be, it was that they were hard in ways that you didn't expect.” ***

I will warn you though there is a rape scene in this. I like to give people a heads up on that because for me it can ruin an entire book if I’m not prepared for it. It wasn’t just thrown in though it actually meant something to the story and so I’ll accept it even if I hate that it is in there.

Poppy was the one positive new character that I liked a lot. She is one of the few magicians who seem happy. Not only is she great at her craft she isn’t busy trying to run off and find a new world but is consumed with the magic and wonder of this one. Her positivity is astounding especially after meeting all these other magicians who really are at varying levels of being miserable.

*** “You’re all so obsessed with other worlds, you’re so convinced that this one is crap and everywhere else is great, but you’ve never bothered to figure out what’s going on here!” ***

I enjoyed meeting up with Penny and Josh again to see what they were up to since the last book. Penny always seems to find a way to be half mysterious and half infuriating but it is always entertaining.

I’d say the Lev Grossman still has a tendency to describe descriptions at times. Sometimes it works for me and other times I’m just thinking ‘okay let’s get on with the story’. It is just his style and most of the time it doesn’t hinder the flow. I liked the quest and the very cool boat needed to complete it. I enjoyed talking with a Dragon, visiting the realm of the dead and taking a look at the house from the Fillory books. All in all most of the book was much better. It is just that I still struggle to like any character and I didn’t really understand how the Quest for the Key stopped the gods from closing the door to magic into Fillory. But overall much better than the first book.

*THERE IS A MINOR SPOILER IN HERE, MOSTLY FOR A TRIGGER WARNING FOR RAPE*

When I read the first book in this series, The Magicians, I gave this series the benefit of the doubt. I thought I was going to like the sequel a lot more because it starts out in Fillory. However, that didn't really matter because it seems like our "hero" Quentin has had zero personal growth. It feels like he has learned absolutely nothing from the events of the first novel. It really annoyed me, because I thought maybe he would have been a more interesting character in his novel. Not the case! He's all, "Oh, woe is me, I get to be a king of Fillory, but I haven't had any adventures!" STOPPPPP!!!!

*TRIGGER WARNING IN THIS PARAGRAPH*
I was so not here for Quentin and his BS in this sequel. The novel was structured weird because it kept flipping back and forth between the present day and Julia's past. We see at the end of the first novel that Julia ends up with the group as a Queen of Fillory, but we don't know how she learned magic or why she is not "all together there." I was interested in Julia's journey, and honestly the book might have been more engaging if it focused on her entirely, and left out Quentin. *The reason that Julia is the way she is, is because she has gone through the truama of sexual assault. I really did not like this, because it felt like there was zero reason why there needed to be a rape scene in this novel about magic. I also feel like it was written off as a joke, there is a line that says, "This wasn't his first rodeo." That really pissed me off, and I think it was completely unnecessary to the story. The story tried to explain it by this is how Julia has become something not human, but I call BS I think the author just wanted to get away with a rape scene in a book that 100% DID NOT NEED IT.

I also really found myself annoyed with the audiobook narrator in this one. I don't think it irritated me as much in the first book, but in this one it really started to grate on me. He pronounces the word "white" so weird, and since in Fillory they live in Castle Whitespire, I had to hear it all the time. He also pronounced the Egyptian god Anubis super weird! Is it just me? I just couldn't stand him, and I don't think I can stomach another audiobook done by this narrator.

I felt like this book was just entirely too long. It just also became apparent just how derivate of C.S. Lewis' Chronicles of Narnia this story really is. I'm really put off by this novel, and I don't think I'm going to be continuing with this series. I think there is only one more book in the series, but I can't stand another book about whinny Quentin Coldwater.

Great book. For once, not a happy-ever-after fairy tale with only perfect people who always make the right decisions. The characters in this book are refreshingly human, even though they have inhuman powers.

The book came quickly and in great shape. So far I'm about 50 pages in and I keep waiting for it to get better. He really took my breath away with the Magicians, and this one is really failing to live up to those expectations.

Ordered this for my HP Printer. I was a bit reluctant at first as a warning message popped up alerting me that they were not HP ink cartridges. I continued to use them and have had no issues whatsoever. I am very happy with this as it is a great cost savings and works perfectly with my printer.

...Because it's just such a huge step down from the first book. Yes, the first book was quite obviously in large part an effort, inter alia, to deconstruct/reinterpret the famous Narnia books, but Grossman was largely successful in keeping this reasonably organic to the novel. That way, you could appreciate that aspect if it appealed to you but the narrative still functioned as an engaging and original story in its own right. Here, however, Grossman's storytelling feels rather more too-frequently derailed by his desire to go out of his way to show how HIS fantasy is just oh so terribly LITERARY, don't you know - not like that other stuff. This is in definite and unflattering contrast to a writer such as Gene Wolfe, who is simply good enough to tell fantasy stories with literary aspects and elements organically woven into them. Grossman generally seems more to try to thrust them into his narrative whether they quite fit or not; hence my impression that he appears to be driven by some kind of compulsion to prove something in doing so. Regardless, these inorganic and not infrequently rather unbelievable (and don't give me that "but it's fantasy!" crap - fantasy has as much of an obligation to remain internally consistent as any other fiction) intrusions of pretension certainly detract from the narrative and generally render the book a far less worthwhile read.

Grossman's unsubtle disdain for Christianity is put on flagrant display as well. As I generally dislike it when authors editorialize on religion (why should the characters get to obtain answers with so much more certainty than all the rest of us? and why - oh, just by pure coincidence most likely - do those answers turn out to be so generally consistent with the author's own apparent views on the merits of religion?), this did not aid in endearing the book to me either. At times Grossman's approach to the topic felt so ham-handed I felt for a few moments a bit as if I was reading some kind of mirror-universe atheist version of the Left Behind books. I don't think Tim LaHaye (and is there another guy? I don't recall, and can't be bothered to look it up) ought to be taken as a literary role model - not even as an inverse. Overall just a tremendous disappointment that I regret wasting my money on purchasing. Steer clear unless you're as ready to mistake wankery for quality as Grossman is.

I enjoyed the first book despite its shortcomings and looked forward to reading this sequel. I even paid full price for both. Now that I have read the sequel, I can't say that I feel the same way about its inevitable follow-up.

We start with Quentin and the three people who picked him up at the end of the last book (Julia, Eliot, and Janet) well established as the rulers of Fillory. Like Narnia, which Grossman rips off even more blatantly in this book than he did in the last, Fillory has two kings and two queens. We skipped over exactly why or how this came to be and no explanation is offered in this book. We DO get a detailed explanation for how Julia became a magician without an acceptance to Brakebills. The story is interesting, but I disliked it for personal reasons. I just take umbrage with any person, fictional or non, who blames their failures on other people. Julia's story is filled with whining about how she deserved to get into Brakebills and she blames everyone except herself for flunking the exam that got her rejected in the first place. INCLUDING QUENTIN, which suddenly becomes a major plot point in the last ten pages of the novel. And since Grossman never establishes that she even WANTED to be a magician in the first place, her attitude is even harder to deal with. Why is she so determined to get into a world she never had much desire to join in the first place? She just wants it because she can't have it. And [BIG SPOILER ALERT!!] that story ends with a crazy rape scene that just pops out of the blue with zero warning and zero context or relevance. There's much to be said about a male author who subjects a female character to rape and then tries to use that as some kind of empowerment.

So first the story is Quentin wanting a quest or some adventure to take him out of his palatial boredom. That veers into Quentin getting moved back to Earth by accident, then trying to get back. Once he gets back, he joins a quest that's nearly over, we get one confusing "action" scene that is honestly very poorly written, and then we learn about a huge, end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it danger 3/4ths of the way through the book. Luckily, this danger can be solved by completing the quest THEY'RE ALREADY ON. And then Surprise!, fifty pages later, quest's over and the danger is gone. WE SEE NO ACTION in this book except for the aforementioned bad scene. There are DRAGONS in this book and it's STILL BORING!! How does that happen? Something somewhere went seriously wrong in the writing of this novel. My guess is that Grossman decided to rip off "The Voyage of the Dawn Treader" practically verbatim then wimped out of that and cobbled together another story to staple onto that one instead. If you're going to rip something off, just go for it! Do it all the way, or don't do it at all. Like the crew of the Dawn Treader, the characters here sail east to various islands looking for lost things that are scattered across the Eastern sea. As they go, the sea gets more shallow and the sun gets more intense, until they reach a place where the world ends. UNLIKE Dawn Treader, we don't actually get to see most of the islands they visit, even though they're named on the map in the front and back of the book. Eliot sums them all up in once sentence for Quentin, and we move right along to the END of that story. In another scene, a character returns to announce that there will be a battle waged between Gods and magicians, and that DRAGONS are helping them fight it. All these dragons burst out, then Quentin leaves to go do something else. WE DON'T GET TO SEE THE DRAGON FIGHT.

What kind of a writer comes up with or rips off awesome ideas for a story, then FAILS to actually WRITE ABOUT THEM?? Why the heck did he choose to ONLY write about the boring parts of this journey? I would have preferred to follow them on their sea adventure and have Quentin show up and briefly explain the boring crap he did on Earth while everyone else was having a good time. Quentin simply isn't an interesting enough character to follow unless he's doing something pretty cool. I didn't realize that in the last book because he WAS doing something that was interesting to read about, and Grossman wrote it pretty well. That is not the case here.

Sorry there are so many spoilers in this review, but I just don't know how to explain my frustration with it without spoiling things a bit. And summing up that frustration in words was harder than I thought it would be. The bottom line is that Grossman had all the plot elements and ingredients to make this book good, but he mixed them all up and told them in the wrong order and in the wrong way, so all we're left with is a peek at what the book COULD have been if he'd handled it better. It's a mess, is what I am trying to say. It's just a really complete and total mess. VERY disappointing.

Based on how things "end" there will have to be a sequel to this. I won't be reading it unless I get a free copy and have a lot of free time.

I had stumbled upon the ongoing original Sy-Fi series, The Magicians, based on “The Magician’s Land.” The series is still progressing at least to season 3.

I never took the time to read “The Magician’s Land.” However, I have had opportunity to read this book, “The Magician King.” It is the second in the trilogy and you need to read the first, first, to pick up on the references.

I have to admit I did not go past chapter two. I found the writing tedious and full of potty mouth. There is even an off-color joke about Fillory Clinton.

The characters do too much sitting around and arguing to on point.

I think I will give up the TV series after reading this book.

Still not my favorite series but this one was better than the first. The storylines are better, the pacing didn’t leave huge gaps of boredom in the middle and there is a little character growth.

*** “You didn’t get the quest you wanted, you got the one you could do.” ***

Quentin, I think the best way to describe him is as someone who is never happy with what he has and always envious of what someone else has. He is your friend at a restaurant that takes the longest time to decide what to order and then complains when the dinners come that he should have got what you were having. Throughout this entire book he never appreciated any of the things he had. He is a king of Fillory, his dream come true and still he isn’t happy. He is melancholy and just waiting for something interesting to happen. This book is pretty much him learning that you don’t know what you’ve got until it’s gone.

For me the thing I liked was Julia’s journey. She didn’t get into Brakebills but knew there was magic out there. I found her journey as a hedge witch to be quite an interesting and difficult tale.

*** “That was the thing about the world: it wasn't that things were harder than you thought they were going to be, it was that they were hard in ways that you didn't expect.” ***

I will warn you though there is a rape scene in this. I like to give people a heads up on that because for me it can ruin an entire book if I’m not prepared for it. It wasn’t just thrown in though it actually meant something to the story and so I’ll accept it even if I hate that it is in there.

Poppy was the one positive new character that I liked a lot. She is one of the few magicians who seem happy. Not only is she great at her craft she isn’t busy trying to run off and find a new world but is consumed with the magic and wonder of this one. Her positivity is astounding especially after meeting all these other magicians who really are at varying levels of being miserable.

*** “You’re all so obsessed with other worlds, you’re so convinced that this one is crap and everywhere else is great, but you’ve never bothered to figure out what’s going on here!” ***

I enjoyed meeting up with Penny and Josh again to see what they were up to since the last book. Penny always seems to find a way to be half mysterious and half infuriating but it is always entertaining.

I’d say the Lev Grossman still has a tendency to describe descriptions at times. Sometimes it works for me and other times I’m just thinking ‘okay let’s get on with the story’. It is just his style and most of the time it doesn’t hinder the flow. I liked the quest and the very cool boat needed to complete it. I enjoyed talking with a Dragon, visiting the realm of the dead and taking a look at the house from the Fillory books. All in all most of the book was much better. It is just that I still struggle to like any character and I didn’t really understand how the Quest for the Key stopped the gods from closing the door to magic into Fillory. But overall much better than the first book.

*THERE IS A MINOR SPOILER IN HERE, MOSTLY FOR A TRIGGER WARNING FOR RAPE*

When I read the first book in this series, The Magicians, I gave this series the benefit of the doubt. I thought I was going to like the sequel a lot more because it starts out in Fillory. However, that didn't really matter because it seems like our "hero" Quentin has had zero personal growth. It feels like he has learned absolutely nothing from the events of the first novel. It really annoyed me, because I thought maybe he would have been a more interesting character in his novel. Not the case! He's all, "Oh, woe is me, I get to be a king of Fillory, but I haven't had any adventures!" STOPPPPP!!!!

*TRIGGER WARNING IN THIS PARAGRAPH*
I was so not here for Quentin and his BS in this sequel. The novel was structured weird because it kept flipping back and forth between the present day and Julia's past. We see at the end of the first novel that Julia ends up with the group as a Queen of Fillory, but we don't know how she learned magic or why she is not "all together there." I was interested in Julia's journey, and honestly the book might have been more engaging if it focused on her entirely, and left out Quentin. *The reason that Julia is the way she is, is because she has gone through the truama of sexual assault. I really did not like this, because it felt like there was zero reason why there needed to be a rape scene in this novel about magic. I also feel like it was written off as a joke, there is a line that says, "This wasn't his first rodeo." That really pissed me off, and I think it was completely unnecessary to the story. The story tried to explain it by this is how Julia has become something not human, but I call BS I think the author just wanted to get away with a rape scene in a book that 100% DID NOT NEED IT.

I also really found myself annoyed with the audiobook narrator in this one. I don't think it irritated me as much in the first book, but in this one it really started to grate on me. He pronounces the word "white" so weird, and since in Fillory they live in Castle Whitespire, I had to hear it all the time. He also pronounced the Egyptian god Anubis super weird! Is it just me? I just couldn't stand him, and I don't think I can stomach another audiobook done by this narrator.

I felt like this book was just entirely too long. It just also became apparent just how derivate of C.S. Lewis' Chronicles of Narnia this story really is. I'm really put off by this novel, and I don't think I'm going to be continuing with this series. I think there is only one more book in the series, but I can't stand another book about whinny Quentin Coldwater.

THE MAGICIAN KING was absolutely a better book than THE MAGICIANS. I felt like THE MAGICIANS was just pieces of a story all cobbled together and didn’t really follow one long thread to make it feel like a cohesive novel and THE MAGICIAN KING actually feels like a story, moving with purpose. It’s an interesting series to get the hang because it’s not like there’s one obvious conflict that carries throughout all three books, as is often the case with trilogies, and yet they’re also not independent of each other. I did like the developments here and where the story went, delving further into the magical world and the elements of Fillory.

I think the thing I enjoyed the most about this book was Julia’s story. Honestly, it was much more interesting the Quentin’s and if you read any review of THE MAGICIANS, you’ll probably read how whiny and unappreciative Quentin is of his time and experiences at Brakebills. It really didn’t bother me as much as it could have but I felt like Julia’s story was much more interesting. THE MAGICIAN KING introduces Julia right off the bat as a completely changed person. There’s something much more unearthly about her and the book spends its time going through flashbacks of Julia’s life after that fateful day when she was presented with the Brakebills entrance exam, working its way forward to explain how she got the way that she is. She has many more hardships, a much more developed personality and story, and the more interesting side of the magical developments. That was really the biggest draw to me and this book.

I also liked the reappearance of several characters, plus a few new ones along the way. I had actually forgotten a few of them with the show clouding my memory and I enjoyed seeing them again! I’m also looking forward to seeing what they do with the TV show. I already know it doesn’t follow the books closely since we started getting way into Julia’s story right away and it doesn’t follow the events from THE MAGICIAN KING either, but I definitely wanted to read the books first and get a feel on the “real” story before moving on to an adaptation. Both are interesting and I’m appreciating both in their own ways!

Not as good as The Magicians. This book felt rushed to publication, as the author seemed to default to "the item magically appears so that quest could be completed..." theme over and over and over. My impression of the first book was that the reader would come to that same conclusion (that fortuitous events mystically occurred occasionally in order to move the quest along), but in the first book, such intervention of "fate" seemed indirect and subtle. In the sequel, the appearence of the missing items doesn't surprise the reader (or the characters within the story) and appeared to be the norm and not the exception.

I still love the author's books and his numerous references to modern events and terminology, but overall, the book was mildly disappointing. The first book seemed so "meaty," with exhaustive portions of the story containing riveting explanations of unusual people, places, events, emotions and relationships. (Who didn't love the development of friendships and antagonistic relationships at Brakebills?). The sequel, on the other hand, seems rushed, with very little for us to sink our teeth into. In the first book I found myself loving (and rooting for) many of the main characters and I empathized with so many of the characters in so many of the scenes. Who wasn't heartbroken when primary and secondary characters died in the first book?

In the sequel, the characters seemed to simply be scenery. They just seemed emotionally checked out and disconnected from each other (none of them seemed to rely on each other for anything in the least). I didn't find myself emotionally invested in the characters in the sequel. It almost seemed like most of the characters showed up for brief cameo appearences, but the characters almost didn't acknowledge each other being in the same scene at the same time and their friendships and their relationships didn't evolve. They didn't love, fight or hate. I think the author lost sight of the fact that we the readers loved the interaction between the characters in the first book most of all (even above the occurrence of the remarkable events themselves).

Like the previous novel in this series, The Magician King is about wizards with depression, and it's a good illustration of how that condition can strip away all sense of joy or satisfaction and leave a person completely listless in every situation. The downside is that, as a novel, The Magician King feels equally listless. Quentin is stuck in a repeating pattern of hating where he is, leaving, and then trying desperately to get back once he decides he hates the new place even more. Julia's flashbacks offer a slightly different pattern -- and a welcome escape from Quentin's barely sketched-in Voyage of the Dawn Treader plot -- but she too views everything with a bleak uncertainty that really begins to grate over time. When you add to all this a quest so inane and under-explained that it never really generates any stakes, as well as a completely gratuitous rape scene, it's very hard to muster any enthusiasm for the final book in this trilogy.

Read from December 26 to 30, 2015

After the disastrous events of The Magicians, Quentin Coldwater remained in Fillory with Julia, Eliot, and Janet, where they assumed the monarchy. Some years later, Quentin, still suffering from congenital ennui, embarks upon a quest to relieve his boredom, and said quest lands him and Julia right back on Earth. Their struggle to return to Fillory takes up a good portion of the novel; interspersed with their joint adventures is Julia's history: the tale of how she ended up a "hedge witch" with a major psychological disorder. When these two narrative threads finally tie together, the story turns dark, and the quest Quentin originally embarked upon turns dangerous. How can they save themselves and Fillory from powers they never knew existed?

Although the entire story is enjoyable, I found Julia's back story most compelling. I was fascinated by her drive, her determination -- her compulsion, even -- to learn magic no matter the cost. And that cost is dear, indeed. It's a testament to Grossman's way with words that he makes two essentially unlikeable people the heroes of this story, and then makes the reader care about them, and ultimately root for them to succeed. Quentin and Julia -- especially Julia -- are damaged goods; their perseverance in the face of that damage is an act of courage, even if they don't recognize it themselves.

As a side note, this novel was surprisingly good -- better than the first book, even. In my experience, the second novel of a trilogy generally serves as a placekeeper, tying up a few threads from the first novel and setting up the big events that come to fruition in the third. While The Magician King does all of that, it's unusually self-contained. It could stand on its own, and that's rare for a second installment. I look forward to reading the third.

It kind of seems that Grossman wrote the first book, not really sure if he would do another. And so reading the second book in the trilogy, it seems that he floundered to create a plot for it. It’s well-written, just like the first book, but it delves more into Julia’s history. Which seems kind of moot, considering she’s only briefly mentioned in the third book. We invest hundreds of pages into the background of a character that literally disappears from the overarching plot of the rest of the series, with the exception of a bleep here and there. But I do really like Julia, and her story is rather tragic. I feel like while Julia becomes sort of manic and obsessed once she finds out about magic, I have absolutely no doubt in my mind I would have reacted in a similar fashion if something like this was ripped away from me. You just should be aware before continuing the series, however, that you figure out the true plot of this book on page 301. I’m being literal; that’s the exact page.

Julia’s story is fascinating. And while, yes, Q is there too, Julia’s story is really what makes this book interesting. I love that you find out a more in-depth perspective on her life. The book is written in such a way that Julia’s part runs parallel with where Q is at in his life during the first book, and then it catches up to the current events that Q is expounding on. Through Julia’s perspective, you find out more about the underground hedge magic being performed, and it seems like a really badass kind of magic. Think of it in terms of intelligence. You can be formally trained, and excel at literary schooling. And then there are other people who have curated a “streets smart” type of persona that is just raw, bootstraps-type of knowledge. Both groups of people are intelligent in different ways. Quentin is technically trained, and Julia has enormous amounts of raw, street training.

Meanwhile, in Q’s perspective, they spend a chunk of this book in Fillory actually presiding over the realm. They’re bored and disenfranchised, so they decide to embark on a quest. And that’s when a can of worms is opened. I won’t really discourse more than that, but it takes a while for the book to find its proper footing in the grand scheme of things. Where the first book was largely world building, this book delves more into character motivations.

THE VERDICT:
It’s a decent book, but my least favorite in the series. That being said, the books are still so well-written and relatable that they remain better than a lot of current magical fantasy realism writers. Or whatever this genre is. The characters still remain delightfully flawed, preposterously realistic, and discordant with their lives, despite all the magic that surrounds them. They are still unhappy, but unlike the first book, they are more mature, more self-aware of this unhappiness, and they strive to make meaningful changes that may actually create eventual happiness. So, yes, the characters grow in this book. I’d say the final book is my favorite, the first is my second favorite, and this one is my least favorite.

Second in The Magicians trilogy, Lev Grossman's The Magician King picks up shortly after the story left off in the first book. Julia is back. Although she failed the entrance exam to Brakebills, she struck out on her own to learn magic while Quentin received his more formal education. The book is divided between the present, in Fillory, and Julia's past on Earth, and details are filled in over the course of the narrative.

Quentin is now one of the kings of Fillory, and Julia is a queen. Older and wiser than he was during his college days, Quentin still suffers from the angst of a pointless existence. Eventually he embarks on a quest which promises a satisfying answer to the meaning of his life.

The first book is crucial to understanding the entire story, and readers will need to go through it beforehand in order to appreciate The Magician King. Although presumably aimed at a younger audience, the book is absolutely not appropriate for youth. The F-bomb is laced throughout the text, with several other profanities intermittently interspersed. Julia's group becomes interested in summoning ancient gods. The resulting chaos includes a graphic and disturbing rape scene.

Ultimately, the book ends in an extremely unsatisfying manner, with no answers to multiple questions. Presumably Grossman will tie up all loose ends in the next book.

Grossman has the ability to write with the easy flow of a conversation and makes the fantastic seem not only conceivable but tangible. There is a natural cadence of words and situations that falls like rows of intricate dominoes with a pattern that cannot be seen until the final reveal. The Magician King extends Grossman's well crafted magical world established in "The Magicians", into a land where magic is common place.
Stories about elves and dragons are whimsical escapism and an accepted part of every schlock fantasy series written since Tolkien's Hobbits took to questing. When fantastic creatures are encountered in the land of Fillory, one can embrace their magical nature as part of mystic places adjacent to our modern world. The questing of Quentin Coldwater has him voyage across a dreamlike landscape. Whether the protagonist is sailing across a wide ocean or descending into the underworld, the weird places places visited are grounded in the familiar.
Combining Grossman's fluid writing style with an excellent premise has produced a very unique series of books that begs to be reread.

In The Magicians, Mr. Grossman took us on an interesting trip through an adult version of C.S. Lewis and J.K. Rowling. However, for fans of Lewis and Rowling, The Magicians could be pretty tough going at times. With The Magician King, Mr. Grossman does himself a service by getting a bit further from his source material. On the other hand, he risks souring fans of his own fiction by challenging the expectations he's set-up in his previous novel.

Quentin, the protagonist of The Magicians, is back as the magician king of this novel. Now a King of Fillory, Quentin sets off on a quest in this novel a la The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. It turns out to be a rollicking good quest, full of danger and good twists and turns. Grossman deserves credit for a really good story. The problem is, Quentin turns out to be really just a secondary character in this book. The Magician King is actually Julia's story.

Julia, a minor character from The Magicians, is a "hedge witch", someone who learns magic on the street. Nearly half this novel is given over to the trials Julia went through to earn her great powers and how it's connected to Quentin's quest. And, on its own, Julia's story is excellent. Seeing how Julia earns her "stars" and becomes powerful is some of the best stuff Grossman's written so far. However, it flies in the face of the world for which he's laid the groundwork in his previous novel.

We're given to believe that Brakebills, the school of magic, is the place where the highest levels of magic are learned. How is it, then, that a group of amateurs, most all rejected by Brakebills, somehow, on their own, in less time that it takes to get a Brakebills' degree, take magic so far beyond the "professionals"? It's really a slap in the face to the energy we've in Quentin and his path.

And that, I think, hints at the even bigger problem. Okay, I can almost accept Julia and her world of self-discovered magic. What I have real trouble swallowing is how weak Quentin turns out to be. After his stay at Brakebills, we're led to believe that Quentin is potentially one of the best magicians around. (His run to the South Pole is still one of my favorite scenes in The Magicians.) And yet, after leaving Brakebills, he hardly ever uses magic unless he's forced to and he rarely does things easily or well. In essence, Quentin is not an actor in this novel, he's a reactor and, therefore, is interchangeable with almost anyone. That is not what I expected when I got involved in this world, and it seems unfair to what Quentin's gone through.

On some level, I'm being nit-picky about a novel that really is quite good. On the other hand, I thought Mr. Grossman had a handle on something great and he's letting it slip away. I assume there will be another novel to come. I hope it capitalizes on the potential of his world and has Quentin grow up a bit.

When I was 83% finished, I found a quote that perfectly encapsulates the problem with this book: "Quentin resolved to take everything as it came, not think too hard, not try to figure it out..." Quentin agrees to be King of Fillory because he's bored, but he's bored with being King, so he invents a quest that has no goal. There are no stakes. He never takes control. He continues stumbling into "opportunities" throughout his journey, but never makes any decisions for himself (even who he sleeps with!) Subplot explaining Julia's situation felt disconnected. This book was recommended by a pillar in the literary community and I'm miffed as to why.

Of course as soon as I read The Magician I had to start reading the sequel, The Magician King (thank goodness I didn't start reading these books until this year). For some reason I have a hard time getting into both of these books but once I reach 1/4 of the way in I can't stop. I thought The Magician King was a fantastic follow-up to The Magicians. I think it suffers from some of the same flaws as the first book, but it improved a lot in other ways and again this book was entertaining and surprising. I was sad to end it! And there better be a third book to follow this one!

The Magician King picks up a little bit after where The Magician left off and soon we find ourselves in the middle of a good old-fashioned quest story. Quentin is forever restless and unsatisfied and I found my old irritation at Quentin starting to bubble up in the beginning of the book. However, that soon went away as I got further into the book and by the end I liked Quentin a lot more in this book than the first one. He was way less annoying here and dare I say he even matured a bit here? The quest itself definitely ripped off a bit of the Narnia book, Voyage of The Dawn Treader, but it was still interesting to read. But seriously couldn't Grossman do a little less ripping off of the Narnia books? Although I guess that's part of the theme of these books and Fillory. Again, Grossman's writing style was fine for the most part, but some of his attempts at more modern dialogue just fell flat with me.

I was surprised to find that my favorite part of this book is the parallel story of what happened with Julia, Quentin's old high school friend/crush who got a glimpse of magic only to be kicked back to the real world. Julia and the others keep hinting at the things she had to go through to get magic, and finally they're going to tell it to us! Only in pieces, every other chapter. I found myself ripping through the questing chapters to find out what happened to Julia (how did she get called to the Brakebills exam?, what happened to her afterwards?, how did she master magic on her own?, why are her powers and spellcasting so different from the Brakebills-educated people?) Unlike Quentin who had this magical world served to him on a silver platter, Julia had to fall as low as she could go and then struggle tooth and nail to learn everything she could get her hands on. While there are two stories that run parallel in this book I thought Grossman did a nice job of switching back and forth between them and tying them together in the end.

I thoroughly enjoyed reading The Magician King, probably more so than even The Magicians, and loved the ending even though it also frustrated me. I'll be keeping an eye out for more Grossman books, especially if he writes a follow-up to The Magician King!

I liked this book a lot, but I did have some issues with it.

I appreciate Grossman's ability and willingness to deal with uncomfortable emotions. It's not often done, or, at least, it's not often done as well as he does it. He's also able to leave you with a tough to digest ending, something that takes courage. I don't think people gravitate to unfulfilling endings, regardless of whether there is something to appreciate in them or not.

Julia's storyline was great. Very interesting and engaging the whole way through.

Quinten, on the other hand, still was kind of boring. Again, I appreciate Grossman following someone who is not "the guy." He's not the High King, and he gets thrust to the side at times, which is not normal for a protagonist, especially in fantasy. But his development still doesn't feel quite right. There is nothing tangible about it. Quinten is telling me that he's different and changed, but I don't see anything to suggest that he actually has.

There were also quite a lot of convenient happenings that got folks out of a jam.

Either way, I liked the story quite a lot. I'm a sucker for real life mythology interwoven in modern stories and Grossman did an excellent job with the in Provence. Another interesting thing about this book: it felt a lot like Ready Player One in that it was an homage to fantasy/ sci fi literature. This homage was done much more subtly and skillfully than that of Ready Player One's 80s lovefest though.

If you've read the other reviews of this book, or you read Grossman's "The Magicians," then you know the setup. What I'd add is that "The Magician King" (TMK) is even more confidently written than "The Magicians" (TM), and it seems to have more twists and turns that always keep the reader engaged. The story is actually much more interesting and complex than the jacket copy seems to suggest.

Quentin's ongoing internal monologue is funny and revealing. In TM he's an angst-ridden geek, and he starts out that way in TMK, but he evolves. I won't spoil it but suffice to say that if you were getting tired of his angst in TM, then you'll get relief in TMK. Also TMK contains Julia's entire story in parallel, which is fascinating and fun. Never did I feel annoyed by the back-and-forth between parallel stories, because the author included clear transitions and subtle foreshadowing, making it increasingly evident the two stories were coming together.

Grossman is a master of his craft. I can't recall reading a book that makes better use of modern idioms and phrases to express ideas and maintain a strong tone throughout such a wide-ranging adventure. The closest thing might be some of Neal Stephenson's better work, without the self-indulgent rambling.

Finally, a note on characterization: Contrary to some of the negative interviews I've read here, I found the characters to be real and sympathetic. The comment about they "don't fight, love, or hate," seems wrong to me. They fight, love, and hate just about as much as you'd expect them to, but the primary conflicts they encounter are Narnia-esque magical conflicts. Character development in TM/TMK is light years beyond most fantasies, such as Narnia, and motivations in these books are more internally consistent and believable than HP's puppet theater. (Sorry HP fans; I still don't believe any of those characters, with the possible exception of Luna.) But hey, fantasy books like these aren't usually expected to be deep character studies, so it's kind of a pointless argument. The characterization is plenty adequate and I personally related very well with most of the major actors. 'Nuff said.

I give this book five stars because I found it engaging, imaginative, original, funny, believable, and masterfully written. It's not deep or heavy, but it's smart, thought-provoking entertainment. VERY good stuff.

This is the second in a trilogy. The third book, "THe Magician's Land" is due next August. I reviewed the first two books at length here: [...] Here's a brief excerpt, discussing the differemce between Harry Potter and Grossman's young magician Quentin Coldwater:
I root for Harry Potter and the gang but I care about Quentin Coldwater, and I cared about him from the first lines of the first book:

“Quentin did a magic trick. Nobody noticed.”

Harry Potter is done and I think even Rowling allowed herself a sigh of relief when she reached the end. Ultimately, Harry was a well-intentioned bore. He could never have had subversive but entirely reasonable thoughts like these about Hogwarts:

Quentin’s mind spun.Maybe he should ask to see a brochure. And no one had said anything about tuition yet. And gift horses and all that notwithstanding, how much did he know about this place? Suppose it really was a school for magic. Was it any good? What if he’d stumbled onto some third tier magic college by accident? He had to think practically. He didn’t want to be committing himself to some community college of sorcery …

Well, Brakebills turned out to be first rate, and so did the books. As for Quentin, he’ll be back next year, in The Magician’s Land, and I for one can’t wait to see him.

If The Magicians was Harry Potter meets The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, The Magician King is The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. Much of the book is spent aboard a vessel, the Muntjac, in pursuit of one quest or another. This book is rather meandering, drifting from one port to another, finding new purpose seemingly at random. They quest for the hare, receive a terrifying prophecy, go to collect back taxes from a meaningless island, and, eventually, end up needing to prevent magic from disappearing. The connections between a lot of this were tenuous at best.

This book was much tougher to get through than the first one, because Quentin spends the whole book in that self-indulgent, whiny, poor little rich boy phase that only dominated a quarter of the previous novel. That Quentin is pretty much impossible for me to like. He is, frankly, quite irritating. Terrible things have happened to him, no doubt, but he just whines about how he wants to be a hero rather than stepping up.

What saved this was the addition of Julia's narrative, which was strange and depressing, but at least broke the flow of Quentin's despondence. Julia has a unique story, one that opens some interesting theoretical and philosophical doors into the world Grossman has created in this series.

This series actually reminds me of Joss Whedon somewhat. Lev Grossman has a similar love for making his characters suffer, never wanting anyone to find long-lasting fulfillment, romantic or otherwise. He also likes to kill off characters to make things feel real. Plus, everything is so incredibly improbable, even through the lens of the universe that he has created. I feel like they might get along. If they collaborated, they would make the most fantastical and depressing story ever.

I infinitely preferred the first book, but am still definitely eager to discover where the story's going to go in the next installment. I sincerely hope that it will find Quentin a more grown up man.

I am insanely crazy about this series!!! The world crafting of multiple worlds & the character making is exquisite!! I love books that don't just barrel thru events & circumstances & you have no idea how they have truly been for the characters past, present & future growth & development. I Love how Mr Grossman not only addressed this, but didn't rush thru it. I get really frustrated with the whole super hero mentality which is completely unrelatable for me. Real people with their damage facing unreal circumstances & how they deal with both & come out at the other end is my thing. But it has to be in a believable created world & Mr Grossman delivers in every count

Loved it! The first book was a big competition for me between the television series and the book. I felt like some of the storyline and a few of the characters were actually better done on the show. The second book was different. While the show touches on a few of the events that occur in this book, for the most part this is a totally different story with familiar characters. Julia's backstory is so much better told, and Quentin feels like he really comes into his own, something the show has so far failed to capture.

In Grossman's previous novel, I found an amazing slightly alternate version of our world where geniuses can learn magic in a very adult format, almost a mature and more logical Harry Potter. That book was one of my favorites of the year, and while this novel it its successor, it is a very different and weaker book. The book really starts in the middle of the Happy Ever After, where the main character becomes bored and wants to go adventuring. For the most part, I wasn't too emotionally invested in Quentin's story, which is really just full of sometimes happy coincidences that help him arrive to the end of the adventure. I actually found it odd that for the most part, he felt so underpowered throughout the whole book, hardly performing any magic until about 2/3 of the way through (but when he did it was pretty awesome, though perhaps he was a little overpowered). The only real saving grace of this book is the half designated to telling Julia's story. It provides an interesting counterpart to the previous Brakebills magical educations, but at times it seems to jump a little too much in time to speed along the story. Also the dichotomy of the two stories in the book caused some problems when switching back and forth with every chapter, but I think that the payoff at the end brings them together nicely.

The whole overarching story of The Magician King is just pretty bland and doesn't feature too much conflict or risk of failure, other than worrying about not being able to get back to Fillory. I was also surprised that after the last book's visceral use of multiple main character deaths and/or severe brutal injuries, that really only two people die, both being relatively bit characters. The main jist of the previous book, was that the magical world was a deadly, weird, and incredibly dangerous, while in this one it was mostly harmless (except possibly parts of Julia's story) as long as you play along and continue the adventuring. I almost felt like at times, the book overused the very fantasy cliches that the characters in the book regularly denigrate. This was possibly done on purpose, but it tended to drag me out of the story and the possible consequences.

So overall, the book is very well written, mostly eloquent and original, but it just falls a little short in my mind, especially when compared to the first book. Also, I intend no spoilers, but the end and the consequence for the character's actions is both inconsequential and frustrating, giving neither a happy ending nor a horrible ending, just something blah. Maybe that's what the author was going for, that in the real world there are just endings, neither happy or sad. Or possibly Grossman is just setting up the next book, but I just didn't feel satisfied when I finished reading the book.

You know, I'm really loving this book more than the first. Why? I can't really put my finger on it. It could be that there's the feeling that everything's tightened and perfected about the world of Fillory this time around, and maybe the new voice of Julia is what really makes everything thing feel all tied together. Either way, I LOVED this sequel, and now I just want more of Fillory and the misadventures of Quentin & Co. ASAP.

What I love most about "The Magicians" series is the sense of reality that Grossman brings to his characters. They think in four letter words, they screw up, they want to feel alive more than anything else and do stupid things in order to do so - like real people do. The cast may be magicians now, but they're still very human; unlike in so many books where fantasy and the human world meet, the human characters suddenly are able to leave their humanity and all of its screwups behind. That's the double-edged blade of the fantasy genre - it can both be awesome that you can suddenly become something more than human, but at the same time, it can also be awful that you leave that humanity behind without even thinking (or reflecting later) about it.

And then there's Julia. We see that there's "two of her", as it says in the book, with two sets of memories of the day she failed the Brakebills exam, both as a human and as a magician. If you were to fail the Hogwarts exam, how would you feel? That's what Grossman is asking us in this book, and takes a look at how devastating that would be, regardless of gender. How desperate it would make you to get back to that world of fantasy where everything you want to be real is real, how you'd literally do anything to be that person you could have been, and the toll it takes on sanity in the process. We delve deeply into Julia - her mind, her memories, her psyche, both now and in the past, and it just makes the land of Fillory and the ideals of fantasy all that more tangible, all that more wonderful, and all that more terrifying should you lose your ticket to Platform 9&3/4s. You lose you. It comes down to that, and we as the audience get to experience that in Julia's skin while she goes with Quentin on all of his adventures.

So really, this book is Julia's book above all else, even with a 3rd person close POV on Quentin for most of the chapters. And because of all of the emphasis on the question of what makes us human even if we're not on Earth anymore, I felt like this was really the better book out of the two so far. There better be a third. I can't wait to see what happens next.

So if you want a little more reality mixed with your urban fantasy, try out the "Magicians" series. You'll be laughing and crying at the same time, and you definitely will not regret this read.

(posted to librarything, goodreads, shelfari, and witchoftheatregoing.wordpress.com)

This is the sequel to The Magicians, a bestselling novel that came out a couple of years ago to much critical acclaim.
In this volume we find the protagonists of the first novel in the land of Fillory, which they now rule. Eliot, Quentin, Julia and Janet are the kings and queens of that magical place, with the first holding the post of the High King. Since the day they settled there they spend their days in idle tranquility, without many, or any rather, ups and downs, and all over their realm there's peace. However, as they are soon to find out, that peace is fragile, and if they do not act promptly, as a cranky seer advices them to, it will be shred to pieces, and catastrophe and death will ensue.
The four of them, at the beginning, will not take that prophecy too seriously, because, well, who would really believe the bleak ramblings of a talking animal, but time will prove them wrong. Before that though, Quentin, as if suddenly awoken from a beautiful dream, will come to realize how boring his life has become, and so he'll set on a seemingly not that important quest; he'll sail to a far away island in order to receive the taxes ought to the kingdom. But in order to do that there are some other things he has to take care of first. To start with he has to find the perfect ship and then the best warrior there is to take along as his bodyguard. Later rather than sooner he gets ready and he sails away, in the company of some fearless sailors, the said bodyguard, a young cartographer and Julia, the most accomplished of the magician-rulers of the land.
What though starts as a simple journey ends up as a big adventure. An adventure that will lead our heroes first to their destination and from there onwards to Chesterton, Massachusetts, Quentin's birthplace, and after that to Venice, where they'll meet Josh an old friend of his, and a strange girl called Poppy. The city of the filthy waters and the endless canals, where they'll also meet a dragon, won't be but a simple stop in their adventurous journey, as soon they'll return for a brief spell to Fillory, before setting off again for the Neitherlands, which seems to have fallen victim to the wrath of the gods. Their quest will one day lead them even to the underworld, but until that happens they will go through a lot of troubles; troubles which will finally open their eyes to the truth and make them realize that the animal's prophecy is about to come true. Unless... Unless they discover the seven golden keys that can save their world from the coming doom.
As these things take place in the present time, the author gives us in a parallel narration the back-story of Julia, a now almost all-powerful witch, who in the past though failed to pass the exams and thus study in the same school her friends did. And a sad story it is. Her life until reaching a unique school in France and the utopia of Fillory has been full of hardship and pain, violence and disappointment. What we read makes us better comprehend her complex character and understand her cold manners; her unwillingness to smile.
Grossman does not hesitate to talk about sex and rape in a language that at some points can be described as harsh, but nevertheless, necessary. These are just (or not just, ok) couple of facts of everyday life, he seems to think, and as such they deserve to be explored; especially the impact they can have on one's psyche.
He also doesn't hesitate to pay respects to some other authors and books, or even legends, so here and there we read about the exploits of Merlin and Harry Potter, about The Chronicles of Narnia and even Shakespeare (one of the characters is called Failstaff).
The Magician King is a great fantasy novel, which will surely offer much joy to the friends of the genre. If I can judge by its ending, I'd say that there's more to come in these series, and I for one look forward to it.

This is a sequel to Magicians which came out a couple of years ago, and a book I really enjoyed as a dark blend of Harry Potter and Narnia. This was definitely not a book for children and got very mixed reactions. I would recommend you read this before The Magician King.
In Magicians we ended up with our `hero' Quentin, as one of the four ruling kings and queens of the magical land Fillory, but he is a little bored and looking for an adventure. A simple quest to a faraway isle seems ideal, they haven't paid their taxes in a while, but Quentin just wants a little adventure....
With further nods to Narnia this has a lot of Voyage of the Dawn Treader about it, but again with a dark twist. And this is not just Quentin's story, but also fellow queen Julia, the Hedgewitch, and her story becomes more important as it appears that the magical lands may be doomed and Quentin's quest becomes a lot bigger then he thought.
Author Grossman gives you much you are familiar with, especially Narnia fans, but then shakes that familiarity by taking you (and his characters) in some very strange directions. It's great fun and the underlying darkness does not let you get complacent with the direction of the story, Quentin's desire to be a proper hero, Julia's need to find herself and the consequences of their actions.
Sometimes it is not comfortable reading but it was a delight to see how Grossman plays with the readers assumptions and twists what they are used to. There are hints of a third book from the author and I would love to see how he would close this off as a trilogy, all I do know is that he will do it in an original and unique way.

The Magician King: A Novel (Magicians Trilogy)A lovely two-book (so far) series of books about teenagers becoming magicians both Lev Grossman's The Magicians and The Magician King are more coming-of-age novels than a simple Harry Potter ripoff. It scarcely gives a nod to Rowling's work, being a more sober and less gee-whizzish set of tales. There is both a magician's college and a magician's school of hard knocks, both attended by believable characters compounded of human decency and piss and vinegar who learn hard truths about life and harder truths (yes, I know, but it sounds good) about magic, and the kind of gods who underpin a world with magic in it.

Despite the coming-of-age description, it's fairly adult in terms of sex, drinkin' and cussin', so uptight folks should shield their children's eyes, wrinkle their noses in disgust and smugly assure themselves that their morals are somehow superior. Remember, virtue is its own reward--and so is vice.

Last Thursday evening I picked up "The Magicians" and wound up spending the better part of my weekend reading it. On Sunday, desperate for more, I purchased "The Magician King" and spent a few days reading it. So this review is based on reading them back-to-back. And my overall impression: I would readily give "The Magicians" five stars (and just finished doing that). "The Magician King," on the other hand, wasn't nearly as well executed.

What I loved about "The Magicians" was my ability to readily relate with the characters, situations, and emotions described therein. The quest section of the book wasn't the best I've ever read, but the school sections more than made up for it.

In "The Magician King" Grossman almost immediately launches us into yet another fantasy quest, in the same vein as that which ended "The Magicians." But this time we don't get an opportunity to get deep into the characters' heads and emotions. And despite my having just finished "The Magicians," I was surprised to discover that the characters were not really the same at all in this second book. Somewhere along the way they lost a lot of depth, and somewhere along the way the ghost slipped into the machine and took the driver's seat, kicking the characters and their emotional responses into the back.

All of which is not to say that this book is a complete dud. It has moments of extreme intensity, a perfect sprinkling of humor, and some very engaging plot elements. While I thought that most of the quest was rather standard, I really enjoyed the subplot about Julia, and found it to be almost as interesting as much of the first book. And some of the images Grossman came up with -- such as Fillory's gymnasium underworld -- were incredibly creative. However, due to rather poor character development and emotional buildup, even when disaster strikes in "The Magician King" I wasn't nearly as invested as I had been for the final moments of "The Magicians."

A somewhat disappointing second act. But I will certainly pick up the third book the day it becomes available.

Many of the characters from The Magicians are back for this second installment. Quentin (one of the kings of Fillory) is bored. He decides to visit Outer Island to see why they are late paying their taxes. Julia (one of the queens of Fillory) decides to go with him. Insanity ensues. A delightful book that brings Quentin back to earth for a while and then sends him right back to Fillory with company.

The Magicians was a quite pessimistic book, Magician King starts to turn that around. I suppose it is because Quentin himself is changing as he grows up.

Book 2 was a drastic shift from book 1, color me intrigued. The story and the characters have greater depth and substance than before. Though still naive and a bit egocentric, Q evolves, he sympathizes and relates more to the people who surround him. I think more than Q's adventures, Julia's story brings dimension to the story and an insight to her motives. Still full of clever modern wit and references, whimsically fantastical images, and a dose of cruel reality, the second book stepped its game up on plotline and character developmemt. I'm glad I chose to stick it through, the author has definitely caught my attention; next up, book 3.

Interesting that the average review right now for this book is 3.8, because I'd like to give it a 3.5, I suppose. As some others have said, the ending was a bit 'HUH?' (to be more polite than what I'm actually thinking). And as someone else said, it was a little 'flat' compared to 'The Magicians'. I liked a lot of this book, and there were passages that were as good as anything in the fantasy genre; yet there were also other passages or chapters where it was a struggle. Another reviewer on here said he liked the 'references to modern things' in the book. I didn't particularly. It was OK when he referenced Monty Python, Harry Potter, etc., and admittedly, half of these two books takes place in the real world. But what I found irritating was the author's use of 'hip slang', whether from NY or some Silicon Valley software house, and although I'm no prude, there was a bit much of the gratuitous cussing as well. It was just jarring to read a somewhat-typical fantasy passage and then some slangy-cussy sentence or two.

"The Magician King" takes off after "The Magicians" ended, giving us another take at the land of Fillory. The group of fantasy-land kings and queens are feeling unsatisfied with their life as rulers and embark on a quest, in fine fantasy-land tradition. But while mirroring the standard fantasy world tropes, Grossman's characters show a lot more life. They have their own problems of dissatisfaction, pettiness and feelings of inadequacy or confusion. They stumble through, seeking to find and defend their own egos as much as to find seven hidden golden keys, the ostensible reason for their quest. Things grow darker as they face death, banishment and self-sacrifice. Their world is literally crumbling and they are helpless to stop it.

Like "Magicians" before, "The Magician King" explores some interesting questions of how to find meaning in life and how we face and draw from challenges. Grossman takes the time to flesh out the somewhat neglected character Julia which gives us the chance to see Quentin and his world from yet another perspective which proves to be illuminating. Characters may grow and learn but like real-life people, lessons don't always stick and they still struggle with their desires and sense of morality.

The depth of the story and characters doesn't detract from the plot and pacing which is strong throughout. I found myself very interested in what happens to everyone, almost because of their flaws rather than in spite of them. Grossman wraps up some lose ends but still leaves us with a lot of mystery, practically begging for a third book to wrap things up. I know I will be reading it as soon as it comes out.

I enjoyed this sequel more than I did its predecessor, The Magicians, which is billed as a Harry Potter for grownups. The first book centers on Quentin, a disaffected real-world teenager who is whisked off to an exclusive school of magic, but his continuing ennui and the rambling quality of the book didn't keep me engaged. Julia, a crush of Quentin's who was tested for but not invited to attend the school of magic, plays a small but significant role in the first book. She ends up sort of jumping off the grid, and teaching herself magic in the gritty underworld of safe-house magicians but we didn't see much of her, so I was intrigued when I heard author Lev Grossman say in a radio interview that he had outlined only one chapter for Julia in this sequel but when he started writing her story took over half of the book. Those unplanned sections on Julia and her hardscrabble back-story were what made me set aside the other three books I had started so I could read The Magician King straight through.

Overall, this wasn't bad and I wanted to give this 3 1/2 stars, but you can't give half star ratings, so I settled for 3. Like the first book in this series, it started kind of slow. Your still following Quentin Coldwater, but now your also following Julia, but only during flashbacks (You see what she went through while Quentin was attending Brakebills). She's kind of detached, and not that likable, but it makes sense for her character, and you find out why fiesta the end of the book. It would have been nice to see a few present day moments from here perspective since she was a major character in this book

I enjoyed it a lot. I think it was better than the first book in the series. In the first book there were large segments that dragged on with seemingly little point to there, but there weren't as many in this book,

One thing that many might not like about this one is that the story goes back and forth in the timeline while telling what happens to the characters. While I can understand why it was done this way, (an attempt to fill in necessary character background without giving away major plot points too early), the skipping back and forth is likely to annoy or confuse some folks as there's not much warning when the author uses this tactic. This book fills in the gap as to what happened to Julia after she was denied entrance to Brakebills. Warning: hers was not a happy story.

Overall, I did enjoy reading the book and will continue on with the series.

Like the first it succeeded in entertainment but not much else. There wasn't so much as plot holes as insufficient fillers that seemed a little rushed. It wasn't enough to take me out of the story but I did ask myself a few times while reading this what the point was with a few scenes and why certain things were explained in such detail while more important elements were just glossed over.

I was prepared to hate this book. After all, I hated the first book so much. while this book had the same flaws: the tendency of Grossman to have characters who talk about what had happened rather than plonk the reader in the scene while it happened, it at least had better story structure. i find myself skimming Quentin's quest - he remained insufferable, though changes to a more tolerable guy in the end - it was Julia's story that intrigued me.

There's a lot of hoo has about how her story resolved, but life isn't perfect. it can be terrible even in fiction.

Now, apparently Grossman had high ambitions of deconstructing the fantasy genre - I hated the wink wink tone of it all, I just wanted a yarn that entertained me, is that too much to ask?? I also understood how the characters are a reflection of the angst and aimless ennui of millennials. I just didn't connect or was emotionally affected by this. Was it the execution or was it the fact that these issues irritate the frak out of me? Maybe both.

This is the sequel to _The Magicians,_ which I wrote about earlier this year.

Ultimately, while this book also has a downer of an ending, it's a more fitting downer of an ending. Also, while Quentin was still very much a self-serving prat, he had his moments of growth and eventually became a much fuller, more sympathetic, character than he was the first time around.

I really enjoyed the filling in of Julia's backstory, of her life during Quentin's years in book one, but I found the way they were presented--as rotating chapters between chapters of the primary story--disjointing. Ultimately they made for turning an easy read into a longer read as I needed to take more breaks from all the jumping back and forth.

And now that it's happened in two of the novels in this trilogy, I have to wonder what is with this author and fox-rape? Where that incident was terrible in the first book, it made sense as part of the plot. In this book, more graphically, it felt gratuitous and unnecessary.

Second in The Magicians urban fantasy series for young adults and revolving around the four new rulers of Fillory.

My Take
It's such an odd combination of contemporary, medieval, and Alice in Wonderland with a bored Quentin eager for a quest, and he's not the only one who falls into the questing habit.

It's mostly a vehicle for Julia's back history. The ordeals she went through after she was rejected from Brakebills. Her determination to explore and learn about magic. It's a lucky chance for Quentin when the two of them get stranded on earth…without magic!!

I can't feel sorry for Julia. She's so pissy and angry that Quentin got into magic school, and she didn't. That she had to struggle s-o h-a-r-d… Sorry, babe, your choice. And maybe it's karma that caught up to her, after she ignored Quentin so much in high school.

Then poor Eliot gets pulled into the adventures as Fillory acts oddly with waterfalls falling down, literally, and that warning of impending doom.

It's adventure after adventure, even if some are on earth, of searching the world for the seven golden keys.

It's also juvenile, confusing, and all over the place with lame, shocking, and WTF adventures.

The Story
There's not much to ruling in Fillory. You'd really have to work at it to do poorly, and it's boring Quentin no end. As for Julia. She got messed up when she failed that exam. And she's only gotten worse and worse, less and less the brilliant, put-together Julia.

The quest seems a godsend until it sends Quentin and Julia back into their own world. One they're desperate to leave, to get back to Fillory. It will take all of Julia's skill and connections to provide that chance.
And the Neitherlands are falling apart, for the gods are taking magic back.

The Characters
Castle Whitespire is…
…where the kings and queens of Fillory live. Quentin Coldwater is a king of Fillory. Dauntless is his talking horse. Queen Julia (her online name is ViciousCirce) is a hedge witch with sharp jagged edges who has given up using contractions. Queen Janet Pluchinsky and the luxury-loving High King Eliot Waugh are fellow rulers. Jollyby is the Master of the Hunt and a were-lion.

Admiral Lacker is in charge of the Fillorian navy and is based on the Morgan Downs. The wrecked Muntjac , a fast and tough Deer class workhorse, is the ship Quentin insists upon. Abigail is the sloth, a psychopomp, who represents the magical animals of Fillory. Aral and Bingle are professional mercenaries drawn to the fight Quentin has set up. Benedict Fenwick is the cartographer in charge of maps. The Fenwicks are the most senior of the noble families. The Lorians are Fillory's neighbors to the north.

The Outer Island was…
…founded by Captain Banks. Elaine is the Customs Agent who tends the borders of Fillory and the five-year-old Eleanor is her daughter.

Venice, Italy, is…
…where Josh lives now. He's the fixer who took off with the button and explored the Neitherlands. Until it broke. Poppy is his friend who knows all about dragons; she's a graduate of Esquith, the Australian magic school in Tasmania.

Free Trader Beowulf is…
…an online support group for really depressed people who turn out to be based in Murs, France. Certified. Failstaff, the acidly sarcastic Pouncy Silverkitten who had been a successful day trader, Fiberpunk is a metamagician who draws a lot, Ivy League Iris likes to test people, and Asmodeus are magicians. Gummidgy is a dedicated psychic. Project Ganymede is an attempt to comb the world's religions and tales of gods for truths.

A tarasque dragon is a whiner while a holy man named Amadour claims to serve the goddess. Fen was the good guide from The Magicians who exists in the Underworld.

Brakebills is…
…the secret college of magic, which sounds rather like Hogwarts. Dean Fogg is in charge. Of the different groups, the four primary protagonists belonged to the Naturals. William "Penny" had been a fellow student with Quentin and Alice Quinn. Professor Melanie Van der Weghe and Penny explored travel between worlds. Professor Geiger can do portals.

The safe houses are…
…where wanna-be magicians come to learn magic. Jared, a linguist in Bed-Stuy, ran the first safe house. Alex and Warren, a wood spirit, are in charge of others.

The Neitherlands is…
…a made artifact which acts as a transfer station, a space between universes. The handless Penny joined the Order which cares for the Neitherlands.

Fillory is…
…the Narnia of the story. It was a supposed make-believe land written of by Chistopher Plover, who lived at Fowey in Cornwall. He wrote about the Chatwin children — you'll remember Jane and Martin Chatwin who got caught up in Fillory. Thomas is the son of the people who had bought the Chatwin house. The Watcherwoman's legacy is the clock-trees.

The Seeing Hare is one of the Unique Beasts of Fillory and can see the future of any person who catches it. More of the beasts include the Questing Beast which grants three wishes, the Great Bird of Peace that can stop battles, the Utter Newt, the Kind Wolf, the Parallel Beetle, and the Unseen Monitor lizard who can turn you invisible for a year. Ember is a ram-god.

Chesterton, Massachusetts, is…
…where Quentin's parents now live. Mrs. Coldwater is an amateur painter while Mr. Coldwater likes porn and crying. James had been Quentin's and Julia's friend back in Brooklyn, before Brakebills.

The Seven Golden Keys of Fillory are what they seek, for they may save magic.

The Cover and Title
The cover finds us inside the DARK cave, looking out of at the lunar eclipse, the moonlight shining down on the placid waters so still within the cave's mouth. The author's name at the top of the cover and the title below it are an embossed white outlined in a metallic silver.

The title is all about Quentin, The Magician King.

Perhaps I would have enjoyed this a little more if I had let some time elapse after finishing The Magician, but I enjoyed The Magician so much I couldn't wait to see what happened next. It wasn't a bad second installment, but I did get a little bored. It was lacking the excitement, on the edge of your seat, stay up all night feeling that the first one instilled in me.

Quentin is brought back to Fillory by Elliot, Janet, and Julia. We quickly learn that not making it into Brakebills has taken it's toll on Julia and her journey into the world of magic is slowly told throughout the book. Even though Quentin is king of Fillory, he is still unhappy. He craves excitement and adventure since living in luxury doesn't seem to be enough for him. Quentin's journey lands him and Julia back in the real world with no clue how to get back to Fillory. While searching for a way to get back, Quentin reunites with Josh where he finds a new love interest.

When all is said and done, and Quentin's big adventure is over, he finds himself longing to be back where he started, as King of Fillory.

Thanks to Penguin, Viking and NetGalley for access to this title.

I am more than half way through and am probably going to just stop reading. I don't usually do that, but continuing with the book feels like a waste of time because it's not enjoyable. I don't care what happens to any of the characters. Julia and Quentin's "voices" sound the same, so the POV is not distinctive enough for a dual narrative. There is not enough dialogue and many of the descriptions are tediously repetitious. For example, I understood after the first mention that the Venice canal is dirty; saying it over and over again in different ways didn't add any new information. I don't find myself at the end of the day wanting to find out what happens next.

I hate to rate this as a single star, as this book is better than the garbage first book, but I really don't see why people rave about this guy's writing. I love the TV show, it is absolutely amazing, like seriously my favorite show I have ever watched, ever. But like my last sentence, Grossman's writing leaves me wanting; I don't want to listen to excerpts from his teenage blog copy/pasted into the pages of a book. He crams pages full of superfluous language, divergent plot points, and teenage drama instead of giving the reader a something to sip on and enjoy.
His characters often forget that they have developed in the previous book, or previous chapters, and he forces the reader into accepting these horrible plot holes for the sake of adding a few pages to this horrid novel.
Like I said, it was better than the first one, but it is still not even worth the time to read it. I'd rather watch a full marathon of reality TV than be bludgeoned by another one of this guy's books.
In the last pages the protagonist reflects on the impermanence of life in a unique way that left me with something substantial to contemplate, but otherwise I feel like I am worse off for reading this.

The Magician King, the sequel to one of my surprise favorites of 2009 (I had no idea what to expect and ended up reading the entire book before/during a flight from Seattle to San Diego), is fantasy for the iPhone-addicted, prescription-ridden, BA-slugging lost generation who still await their letter from Hogwarts, hoping it might rescue them from the economic apocalypse, or at least from their parents' couch.

The Magician King picks up not quite where we left off, but similar enough in tone for the reader to possibly go "Oh my god, shut up Quentin."After the first chapter, Quentin not only markedly improves, but we also get to hear from Julia, whose anti-Brakebills magical education is far more interesting. If you found Quentin highly abrasive and too hedonistic in the first book, now he only partakes in the occasional inebriation and is frankly, nearly celibate. While sling shoting through the magical and real world, the novel never quite achieves the epic fantasy sense or traps the action in a city enough to be urban fantasy (thankfully?), but notable side characters make reappearances and the whole wide magical world gets quite a bit bigger. Furthermore, something my brother brought up in regards to Harry Potter (we may have gotten into a large debate over the series and our rapidly decreasing willingness to "buy" the world which nearly descended into fisticuffs in from of ABC Family's constant replay of the first few films) is somewhat played for plot--that how you do a spell, who does the spell, and so on, has a marked effect on the efficiency and effectiveness of magic. Woo!

Also, as a semi-professional cartographer, my favorite character was Benedict, who pretty much gets brought along as Quentin's entertainment/improvement project until he finds someone who REALLY needs his help. See: Julia's secondary plot. Benedict attempts to be an awesome mapmaker, in the face of many scientific hurtles, such as a potentially non-spherical world (which would throw a wrench, or shall we say, level in the plan, because how would you determine latitude by angle of the sun if this wasn't something that happened, and since Fillory lacks mechanically, no chronometer for longitude! Woo!) Poor Benedict.

Julia is not only the one who got away, but the one was cast out, who didn't get into the elite college, who had to determine things on her own. Overall, the book's strongest points are avoiding Quentin's more annoying side, which I have seen blamed 10! times for people not finishing the previous book everywhere from io9 to Westeros (and yes, I may have ended up arguing somewhat with them, I am a bit of a Grossman fangirl, though the copy I got signed was for a friend who loved, loved the first book. Loved, loved).

I highly recommend this book and it is on my top 10 list for this year, out of the 130 or so books I have read, and probably higher if we're only counting those actually published in 2011.

Reading Lev Grossman's absorbing sequel to The Magicians is a bit like riding an invisible roller coaster that no one else has ridden and thus no one can really prepare you for. With every page you turn, Grossman opens up new and ever-wilder and ever-wider vistas, exploring the roots of magic itself in a novel that I can only describe as a tour de force.

When The Magician King opens, Quentin is a king of Fillory, the Narnia-like realm he and others had once believed was confined to the pages of a series of books. As Quentin and his friends from Brakebills -- the magical college -- had discovered in the first novel, Fillory was very real indeed. After a series of perilous adventures, the prior book (SPOILER ALERT!) had ended with Quentin flying off to join Eliot, Janet and Julia on the thrones of Fillory.

But even ruling as a king over a magical land like Fillory has its downside, it seems. A few years later, Quentin is restless, and itching for a new adventure or a quest. At first, chasing after a magical Seeing Hare seems like the answer, but that ends in tragedy. So Quentin decides to set off for an island on the outer fringers of Fillory -- so remote that it barely appears on maps -- to collect overdue taxes from residents. He holds a jousting match to select the kingdom's best swordsman to join the expedition and sets off with Julia and a giant talking sloth in the ship's hold. The last thing he expects when he discovers a magic key, is that it will lead to a portal that dumps both he and Julia back on the front lawn of his parents' home in the "real" world. "Quentin, King of Fillory, needed Fillory more than Fillory needed him," he realizes.

Is Quentin's real quest going to be just to get back to Fillory? Or does it have some kind of broader meaning or purpose? Each time you turn the page, the narrative moves and twists in unexpected directions, from a Venetian palazzo to an encounter with a dragon; a magical safe house in the South of France and a kind of Underworld for dead souls. Grossman jousts with big questions here, from the nature of courage and heroism to the nature and origins of magic and gods; The Magicians was merely a warm-up act for this novel. Reading it can be as unnerving as contemplating the meaning of life and the history of the universe, but the darker themes Grossman explores here are offset throughout by his trademark deadpan humor. When it comes to Quentin's quest(s), he realizes that not understanding what he's looking for is normal. "Relative ignorance wasn't necessarily a handicap on a quest. It was something your dauntless questing knight accepted and embraced." However, Grossman has one of his characters point out, "it's not like the Holy Grail was actually useful for anything." Preparing to cast the biggest spell of their lives, one they hope will reveal the nature of magic itself, a group of elite magicians have to wait for the FedEx guy to show up with some of the supplies they need. There are a lot of tongue in cheek and sardonic asides that made me chortle and grin even in the midst of the narrative tension.

One of the fascinating elements of this sequel is how well Grossman does in tying up the loose ends of Julia's life. A high school classmate of Quentin's, she hadn't been admitted to Brakebills -- but the spells designed to wipe the admissions test from her memory hadn't stuck. In this novel, the reader learns how Julia emerged as an exceptionally powerful hedge witch -- and the price she paid for her powers. In the end, we learn of the link between Julia's experiences, Quentin's quest and the nature of the threat to the entire magical world.

Full disclosure: I received an advance copy of the book from the publisher via NetGalley.

Synopsis: Earth-trained wizard Quentin is back in Fillory, the Narnia-clone fantasy-turned-reality world he always wanted to be part of. Something is off with the world of magic, though, and a routine tax-collecting sea voyage ends up turning into an epic worlds-spanning adventure--and magic itself hangs in the balance.

Review: The Magician King shed most of the flaws of its predecessor, Quentin is no longer so deeply defined by misery, though he is still in search of meaning and depth. He is still keen on adventure and heroism as a means to find purpose. All of his magical studies actually come in handy instead of being discarded as soon as conflict arises. And he actually learns from what happens to him and around him. He grows. It's a great thing.

The pacing was WAY better this time around, though it still could have been improved upon. I know the reasoning for bouncing back and forth between events as they are happening in the storyline and Julia's flashbacks, and it was important that the Julia revelations came slowly throughout the plot, but it was still a bit awkward at times to jump between such disparate perspectives and timelines.

Everything that the book did right it did really right. The core conflict was mysterious and huge, and was revealed bit by bit, brilliantly. The fantasy was fantastical, the mythology rich. The vocabulary was varied, interesting, and pointedly precise. The ending was daring, wrenching, and tied things up nicely while leaving everything wide open for the finale. I can't wait for the last book to come out.

If you haven't read The Magicians, go read that first. The Magician King is Lev Grossman's excellent sequel. The book proceeds in parallel narratives, alternating by chapters, between King Quentin and his fellows king and queens in Fillery on the one hand, and the story of what happened to Julia, Quentin's high-school crush, after she failed the entrance exam to Brakebills. The narratives come together in the final chapters. Quentin is still something of a sad sack, always hoping that the next adventure or quest will bring him happiness (guess how that works out), and his story starts a little slow given how familiar it seems to what we've seen before. But it picks up as the quest grows more dire, filled with plot twists, and as Quentin learns some invaluable lessons about heroism. (I really liked the ending of this book; it completely defied expectations and yet managed to be powerful and satisfying at the same time.)

Julia's narrative is filled with desperation, as she tries to learn magic through an unregulated network of magicians with no formal training. Just as the first book managed to capture certain emotional processes wonderfully (such as betrayal), so this one captures obsession and desperation. There is also lots of humor, pop culture references, and endless creativity. (Occasionally Grossman fills a scene with so many creative ideas that it's concentrated delight, as in the contest of swordsmanship competition in this book and the Brakebills entrance exam in the last.) I highly recommend this book. The reading in the unabridged audiobook is excellent.

Note on content: The book has strong language scattered throughout, some fantasy violence, and one harrowing scene of sexual violence.

This book takes its sweet time to get going and there’s lots of unfortunate breaks in action that felt a little deus ex machina but near the end it did move along. I don’t know if it’s worth continuing the series though, nothing essential al here

The book opens with the four rulers of Fillory, a magical land, on a horseback ride into the forest. They're seeking a hare who can predict futures. It's really just a lark, an excuse to have something to do. Then everything turns serious. There is a death and priorities change. Two of the rulers stay home but Julia and Quentin head out for adventure and answers.

Julia's story is riveting, it's beautiful, it's even mystical. She's a hedge witch meaning she's learned her magic alone or with other rogue magicians living in secret safe house, a system not unlike the Underground Railroad. She goes from house to house learning whatever each group knows of the craft. She searches online and finds magical nibbles that are soon erased by big brother. Then she joins an online group of like minded people, some of them are even more damaged than Julia. This group hole's up in a beautiful mansion in Provence. After going down countless tunnels leading nowhere they decide to seek the Goddess. Their journey is lovely as well as terrifying.

Then there's Quentin. Though he loves his life as one of four rulers of his beloved Fillory he's longing for more. That's when a quest presents itself and he can't resist its call. He finds an ancient bewitched boat, repairs it and sets out to parts unknown in search for seven golden keys. Oddly he's not quite sure why he's seeking the keys so he just adds their elusive meaning to his quest check list.

Julia is another of the Fillory rulers and she and Quentin lives weave in and out of one another's finally dovetailing at the ending. I enjoyed this book tremendously though as I said Julia's story packed the biggest punch. I didn't like the ending, or not all of it. I freely forgive Grossman though because he was probably using this ending to set up his next book which I can't wait to read. In case you're wondering, though this book is a sequel to his "The Magician" which I haven't read, I didn't feel lost. He provides enough of the back story to propel you through "The Magician King".

This is the second book after The Magician. It starts off with Quentin, Eliot, Julia and Janet all in Fillory for 2 years now. All Kings and Queens, but all they do is lay around Whitespire eating and drinking and not much else. But, after the Seeing Hare comes running through, Quentin decides to follow it for an adventure. And an adventure is what he gets.

I think at the beginning of the this book, I enjoyed it more than The Magician. The books tells the tale of Quentin and his adventures, but it also goes back in time and tells what Julia was up to during the time Quentin was at Brakebills. You get to understand how she was before she arrived at Fillory and why she is the way she is now. The first half of the book I was really into, but after that Julia's story began to bore me a bit and so did the rest of Quentins story in parts. This book isn't as doom and gloom as the first one though.

The untied ends at the end of The Magician weren't were put together in this one. You don't really get to know how Julia ended up with the other three when they met up with Quentin at the end of The Magician. And they bring up figuring out what Quentin's discipline is at the end of The Magician but it is never brought up at all in this book. It is a completely different adventure. Unless I am missing it somewhere, it is pretty disappointing.

You only really get to know Quentin and Julia more in this book, although there is other characters from the previous novel and a couple new ones, you don't really get to know the characters that much in depth. They only seemed to be there to keep the story going along. There is a couple things that just didn't make sense, like the ending of their quest, it seemed so simple. Overall, it was an okay book in my opinion.

Lev Grossman's second book in his Magicians trilogy picks up several years after the end of the previous installment. Quentin, Elliott, Janet and Julia are the kings and queens of Fillory. Quentin is bored of his life of leisure and ends up seeking with Julia a mythical golden key. The magic door opened by the key brings them back to Earth. Quentin and Julia then seek to return to Fillory. During this time, Quentin and we find out what Julia endured during her magic education. Also, Quentin finally gets the grand quest he desires. To save Fillory and magic from being drained by the old gods from the world.

The chapters on the current quest to save Magic are interwoven with Julia's backstory. After she failed the Brakebills admissions test, Julia's memory was supposed to have been wiped. Unfortunately, inconsistencies enabled her to regain parts, and her desire to learn magic detailed all her carefully laid out plans. Her difficult journey to learn magic through the back rooms, safe houses, and from rogue magic creatures unveiled a very different path from Quentin.

As usual, one of the joys of Grossman's writing is the rich layers of pop culture references. He effortlessly references Tolkien, Die Hard, the Sci-fi role playing game Traveller, Y the Last Man, the popular meditation on math, music and philosophy - Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid, the Matrix, Dan Brown, Gilbert and Sullivan, TGI Fridays, Star Trek, King Kong, and The Wind in the Willows, to name just a few.

After finishing this book, I am eager to read Grossman's 3rd and final installment.

The best part of this book was getting more in depth in the magical world. This isn't Hogwarts, and the examination of how magic affects the world is the most interesting part. Quentin is not interesting. Almost anything involving Quentin, is not interesting. Did you like Chronicles of Narnia's Dawn Treader? Great, there's a boat trip to the end of the world in this one. There are two parallel stories, Quentin's and Julia's. They kind of intersect towards the end, but mostly it's like two separate books were combined into one. There's a rather unnecessary scene that ends the Julia story, though maybe ends isn't really the right word. Something happens, and it no longer matters what happens next. Which about sums up the book. Something happens, and we'll move on to the next thing, whether it be adventure, or in Grossman's case, next book.

I really enjoyed The Magician, and had mixed feelings when I heard Grossman was doing a sequel, hoping it would be a good if not better than the first book, and fearing it would be worse. Thankfully it's the former, a truly enjoyable read, and if you've read the Magicians, this sequel is a must-read!

Our hero in the last book, Quinten, is now enjoying his time as one of the four monarchs of the no-longer-make-believe world of Fillory, except that he's bored and itching for adventure. This being a story, adventure naturally finds him, in ways he of course doesn't expect, despite the fact that he is expecting it. Interwoven through Quinten's story is the backstory of Julia, Quinten's pre-Brakebills high school crush who emerged at the end of the story a witch-on-the-edge in her own right, without the proper magical schooling.

That's the plot. But then, there's the way the author writes it that makes it different. It's a fairy tale that happens to one of us - to you, to me, to your bff, or brother, or roommate from college. It's peppered with modern day references which makes it great for someone of my generation who grew up on all of those movies and stories (Narnia to Harry Potter to Blade Runner to Die Hard, Bugs Bunny to Dr Who, and probably other references I missed). It's got great humor - slightly cynical, slightly self-defeating, great turns of phrase, great characters old and new.

As with the Magicians, the story is a bit uneven. A few places dragged, but in a few places when it was great, it was GREAT! I mean, fantastically great, like this guy has got some talent great, like why isn't the rest of the story like this great (kind of like Quinten at that part where.... oh never mind, that would be spoilerish, wouldn't it?)! In a few places I though I saw parallels with the story which were either a) intentional but really too subtle to seem masterful, or b) accidental which would be disappointing on the author's part. They seemed more like a sense of deja vu, like hey, didn't we already go through this scene a few chapters back?

I want to give it five stars, as it's the story I wish I wrote, and/or it's the story that was written for someone like me, in my generation, for whom references to Bugs Bunny or Die Hard or Hogwarts are part of the vocabulary and though process. But in all honesty, it's got a few flaws, a few minor imperfections that prevent this really, really good story from being among the Greats. I have not read Codex, the author's first novel, but there is definitely a growth and maturity in writing from Magicians to Magician King, a palpable, enjoyable maturity. I look forward to more of Grossman's work.

As for the sequel, I say "Dude, depressing much? There damned well better be!"

I'm not sure what book all the 4 and 5 star ratings read, but it wasn't this. It jumped all over the place, was poorly organized, and generally a disaster of a read. I'm going to read the third book in hopes it salvaged this travesty, but I'm not holding my breath.

Second in The Magicians urban fantasy series for young adults and revolving around the four new rulers of Fillory.

My Take
It's such an odd combination of contemporary, medieval, and Alice in Wonderland with a bored Quentin eager for a quest, and he's not the only one who falls into the questing habit.

It's mostly a vehicle for Julia's back history. The ordeals she went through after she was rejected from Brakebills. Her determination to explore and learn about magic. It's a lucky chance for Quentin when the two of them get stranded on earth…without magic!!

I can't feel sorry for Julia. She's so pissy and angry that Quentin got into magic school, and she didn't. That she had to struggle s-o h-a-r-d… Sorry, babe, your choice. And maybe it's karma that caught up to her, after she ignored Quentin so much in high school.

Then poor Eliot gets pulled into the adventures as Fillory acts oddly with waterfalls falling down, literally, and that warning of impending doom.

It's adventure after adventure, even if some are on earth, of searching the world for the seven golden keys.

It's also juvenile, confusing, and all over the place with lame, shocking, and WTF adventures.

The Story
There's not much to ruling in Fillory. You'd really have to work at it to do poorly, and it's boring Quentin no end. As for Julia. She got messed up when she failed that exam. And she's only gotten worse and worse, less and less the brilliant, put-together Julia.

The quest seems a godsend until it sends Quentin and Julia back into their own world. One they're desperate to leave, to get back to Fillory. It will take all of Julia's skill and connections to provide that chance.
And the Neitherlands are falling apart, for the gods are taking magic back.

The Characters
Castle Whitespire is…
…where the kings and queens of Fillory live. Quentin Coldwater is a king of Fillory. Dauntless is his talking horse. Queen Julia (her online name is ViciousCirce) is a hedge witch with sharp jagged edges who has given up using contractions. Queen Janet Pluchinsky and the luxury-loving High King Eliot Waugh are fellow rulers. Jollyby is the Master of the Hunt and a were-lion.

Admiral Lacker is in charge of the Fillorian navy and is based on the Morgan Downs. The wrecked Muntjac , a fast and tough Deer class workhorse, is the ship Quentin insists upon. Abigail is the sloth, a psychopomp, who represents the magical animals of Fillory. Aral and Bingle are professional mercenaries drawn to the fight Quentin has set up. Benedict Fenwick is the cartographer in charge of maps. The Fenwicks are the most senior of the noble families. The Lorians are Fillory's neighbors to the north.

The Outer Island was…
…founded by Captain Banks. Elaine is the Customs Agent who tends the borders of Fillory and the five-year-old Eleanor is her daughter.

Venice, Italy, is…
…where Josh lives now. He's the fixer who took off with the button and explored the Neitherlands. Until it broke. Poppy is his friend who knows all about dragons; she's a graduate of Esquith, the Australian magic school in Tasmania.

Free Trader Beowulf is…
…an online support group for really depressed people who turn out to be based in Murs, France. Certified. Failstaff, the acidly sarcastic Pouncy Silverkitten who had been a successful day trader, Fiberpunk is a metamagician who draws a lot, Ivy League Iris likes to test people, and Asmodeus are magicians. Gummidgy is a dedicated psychic. Project Ganymede is an attempt to comb the world's religions and tales of gods for truths.

A tarasque dragon is a whiner while a holy man named Amadour claims to serve the goddess. Fen was the good guide from The Magicians who exists in the Underworld.

Brakebills is…
…the secret college of magic, which sounds rather like Hogwarts. Dean Fogg is in charge. Of the different groups, the four primary protagonists belonged to the Naturals. William "Penny" had been a fellow student with Quentin and Alice Quinn. Professor Melanie Van der Weghe and Penny explored travel between worlds. Professor Geiger can do portals.

The safe houses are…
…where wanna-be magicians come to learn magic. Jared, a linguist in Bed-Stuy, ran the first safe house. Alex and Warren, a wood spirit, are in charge of others.

The Neitherlands is…
…a made artifact which acts as a transfer station, a space between universes. The handless Penny joined the Order which cares for the Neitherlands.

Fillory is…
…the Narnia of the story. It was a supposed make-believe land written of by Chistopher Plover, who lived at Fowey in Cornwall. He wrote about the Chatwin children — you'll remember Jane and Martin Chatwin who got caught up in Fillory. Thomas is the son of the people who had bought the Chatwin house. The Watcherwoman's legacy is the clock-trees.

The Seeing Hare is one of the Unique Beasts of Fillory and can see the future of any person who catches it. More of the beasts include the Questing Beast which grants three wishes, the Great Bird of Peace that can stop battles, the Utter Newt, the Kind Wolf, the Parallel Beetle, and the Unseen Monitor lizard who can turn you invisible for a year. Ember is a ram-god.

Chesterton, Massachusetts, is…
…where Quentin's parents now live. Mrs. Coldwater is an amateur painter while Mr. Coldwater likes porn and crying. James had been Quentin's and Julia's friend back in Brooklyn, before Brakebills.

The Seven Golden Keys of Fillory are what they seek, for they may save magic.

The Cover and Title
The cover finds us inside the DARK cave, looking out of at the lunar eclipse, the moonlight shining down on the placid waters so still within the cave's mouth. The author's name at the top of the cover and the title below it are an embossed white outlined in a metallic silver.

The title is all about Quentin, The Magician King.

Perhaps I would have enjoyed this a little more if I had let some time elapse after finishing The Magician, but I enjoyed The Magician so much I couldn't wait to see what happened next. It wasn't a bad second installment, but I did get a little bored. It was lacking the excitement, on the edge of your seat, stay up all night feeling that the first one instilled in me.

Quentin is brought back to Fillory by Elliot, Janet, and Julia. We quickly learn that not making it into Brakebills has taken it's toll on Julia and her journey into the world of magic is slowly told throughout the book. Even though Quentin is king of Fillory, he is still unhappy. He craves excitement and adventure since living in luxury doesn't seem to be enough for him. Quentin's journey lands him and Julia back in the real world with no clue how to get back to Fillory. While searching for a way to get back, Quentin reunites with Josh where he finds a new love interest.

When all is said and done, and Quentin's big adventure is over, he finds himself longing to be back where he started, as King of Fillory.

Thanks to Penguin, Viking and NetGalley for access to this title.

I am more than half way through and am probably going to just stop reading. I don't usually do that, but continuing with the book feels like a waste of time because it's not enjoyable. I don't care what happens to any of the characters. Julia and Quentin's "voices" sound the same, so the POV is not distinctive enough for a dual narrative. There is not enough dialogue and many of the descriptions are tediously repetitious. For example, I understood after the first mention that the Venice canal is dirty; saying it over and over again in different ways didn't add any new information. I don't find myself at the end of the day wanting to find out what happens next.

I hate to rate this as a single star, as this book is better than the garbage first book, but I really don't see why people rave about this guy's writing. I love the TV show, it is absolutely amazing, like seriously my favorite show I have ever watched, ever. But like my last sentence, Grossman's writing leaves me wanting; I don't want to listen to excerpts from his teenage blog copy/pasted into the pages of a book. He crams pages full of superfluous language, divergent plot points, and teenage drama instead of giving the reader a something to sip on and enjoy.
His characters often forget that they have developed in the previous book, or previous chapters, and he forces the reader into accepting these horrible plot holes for the sake of adding a few pages to this horrid novel.
Like I said, it was better than the first one, but it is still not even worth the time to read it. I'd rather watch a full marathon of reality TV than be bludgeoned by another one of this guy's books.
In the last pages the protagonist reflects on the impermanence of life in a unique way that left me with something substantial to contemplate, but otherwise I feel like I am worse off for reading this.

The Magician King, the sequel to one of my surprise favorites of 2009 (I had no idea what to expect and ended up reading the entire book before/during a flight from Seattle to San Diego), is fantasy for the iPhone-addicted, prescription-ridden, BA-slugging lost generation who still await their letter from Hogwarts, hoping it might rescue them from the economic apocalypse, or at least from their parents' couch.

The Magician King picks up not quite where we left off, but similar enough in tone for the reader to possibly go "Oh my god, shut up Quentin."After the first chapter, Quentin not only markedly improves, but we also get to hear from Julia, whose anti-Brakebills magical education is far more interesting. If you found Quentin highly abrasive and too hedonistic in the first book, now he only partakes in the occasional inebriation and is frankly, nearly celibate. While sling shoting through the magical and real world, the novel never quite achieves the epic fantasy sense or traps the action in a city enough to be urban fantasy (thankfully?), but notable side characters make reappearances and the whole wide magical world gets quite a bit bigger. Furthermore, something my brother brought up in regards to Harry Potter (we may have gotten into a large debate over the series and our rapidly decreasing willingness to "buy" the world which nearly descended into fisticuffs in from of ABC Family's constant replay of the first few films) is somewhat played for plot--that how you do a spell, who does the spell, and so on, has a marked effect on the efficiency and effectiveness of magic. Woo!

Also, as a semi-professional cartographer, my favorite character was Benedict, who pretty much gets brought along as Quentin's entertainment/improvement project until he finds someone who REALLY needs his help. See: Julia's secondary plot. Benedict attempts to be an awesome mapmaker, in the face of many scientific hurtles, such as a potentially non-spherical world (which would throw a wrench, or shall we say, level in the plan, because how would you determine latitude by angle of the sun if this wasn't something that happened, and since Fillory lacks mechanically, no chronometer for longitude! Woo!) Poor Benedict.

Julia is not only the one who got away, but the one was cast out, who didn't get into the elite college, who had to determine things on her own. Overall, the book's strongest points are avoiding Quentin's more annoying side, which I have seen blamed 10! times for people not finishing the previous book everywhere from io9 to Westeros (and yes, I may have ended up arguing somewhat with them, I am a bit of a Grossman fangirl, though the copy I got signed was for a friend who loved, loved the first book. Loved, loved).

I highly recommend this book and it is on my top 10 list for this year, out of the 130 or so books I have read, and probably higher if we're only counting those actually published in 2011.

Reading Lev Grossman's absorbing sequel to The Magicians is a bit like riding an invisible roller coaster that no one else has ridden and thus no one can really prepare you for. With every page you turn, Grossman opens up new and ever-wilder and ever-wider vistas, exploring the roots of magic itself in a novel that I can only describe as a tour de force.

When The Magician King opens, Quentin is a king of Fillory, the Narnia-like realm he and others had once believed was confined to the pages of a series of books. As Quentin and his friends from Brakebills -- the magical college -- had discovered in the first novel, Fillory was very real indeed. After a series of perilous adventures, the prior book (SPOILER ALERT!) had ended with Quentin flying off to join Eliot, Janet and Julia on the thrones of Fillory.

But even ruling as a king over a magical land like Fillory has its downside, it seems. A few years later, Quentin is restless, and itching for a new adventure or a quest. At first, chasing after a magical Seeing Hare seems like the answer, but that ends in tragedy. So Quentin decides to set off for an island on the outer fringers of Fillory -- so remote that it barely appears on maps -- to collect overdue taxes from residents. He holds a jousting match to select the kingdom's best swordsman to join the expedition and sets off with Julia and a giant talking sloth in the ship's hold. The last thing he expects when he discovers a magic key, is that it will lead to a portal that dumps both he and Julia back on the front lawn of his parents' home in the "real" world. "Quentin, King of Fillory, needed Fillory more than Fillory needed him," he realizes.

Is Quentin's real quest going to be just to get back to Fillory? Or does it have some kind of broader meaning or purpose? Each time you turn the page, the narrative moves and twists in unexpected directions, from a Venetian palazzo to an encounter with a dragon; a magical safe house in the South of France and a kind of Underworld for dead souls. Grossman jousts with big questions here, from the nature of courage and heroism to the nature and origins of magic and gods; The Magicians was merely a warm-up act for this novel. Reading it can be as unnerving as contemplating the meaning of life and the history of the universe, but the darker themes Grossman explores here are offset throughout by his trademark deadpan humor. When it comes to Quentin's quest(s), he realizes that not understanding what he's looking for is normal. "Relative ignorance wasn't necessarily a handicap on a quest. It was something your dauntless questing knight accepted and embraced." However, Grossman has one of his characters point out, "it's not like the Holy Grail was actually useful for anything." Preparing to cast the biggest spell of their lives, one they hope will reveal the nature of magic itself, a group of elite magicians have to wait for the FedEx guy to show up with some of the supplies they need. There are a lot of tongue in cheek and sardonic asides that made me chortle and grin even in the midst of the narrative tension.

One of the fascinating elements of this sequel is how well Grossman does in tying up the loose ends of Julia's life. A high school classmate of Quentin's, she hadn't been admitted to Brakebills -- but the spells designed to wipe the admissions test from her memory hadn't stuck. In this novel, the reader learns how Julia emerged as an exceptionally powerful hedge witch -- and the price she paid for her powers. In the end, we learn of the link between Julia's experiences, Quentin's quest and the nature of the threat to the entire magical world.

Full disclosure: I received an advance copy of the book from the publisher via NetGalley.

Synopsis: Earth-trained wizard Quentin is back in Fillory, the Narnia-clone fantasy-turned-reality world he always wanted to be part of. Something is off with the world of magic, though, and a routine tax-collecting sea voyage ends up turning into an epic worlds-spanning adventure--and magic itself hangs in the balance.

Review: The Magician King shed most of the flaws of its predecessor, Quentin is no longer so deeply defined by misery, though he is still in search of meaning and depth. He is still keen on adventure and heroism as a means to find purpose. All of his magical studies actually come in handy instead of being discarded as soon as conflict arises. And he actually learns from what happens to him and around him. He grows. It's a great thing.

The pacing was WAY better this time around, though it still could have been improved upon. I know the reasoning for bouncing back and forth between events as they are happening in the storyline and Julia's flashbacks, and it was important that the Julia revelations came slowly throughout the plot, but it was still a bit awkward at times to jump between such disparate perspectives and timelines.

Everything that the book did right it did really right. The core conflict was mysterious and huge, and was revealed bit by bit, brilliantly. The fantasy was fantastical, the mythology rich. The vocabulary was varied, interesting, and pointedly precise. The ending was daring, wrenching, and tied things up nicely while leaving everything wide open for the finale. I can't wait for the last book to come out.

If you haven't read The Magicians, go read that first. The Magician King is Lev Grossman's excellent sequel. The book proceeds in parallel narratives, alternating by chapters, between King Quentin and his fellows king and queens in Fillery on the one hand, and the story of what happened to Julia, Quentin's high-school crush, after she failed the entrance exam to Brakebills. The narratives come together in the final chapters. Quentin is still something of a sad sack, always hoping that the next adventure or quest will bring him happiness (guess how that works out), and his story starts a little slow given how familiar it seems to what we've seen before. But it picks up as the quest grows more dire, filled with plot twists, and as Quentin learns some invaluable lessons about heroism. (I really liked the ending of this book; it completely defied expectations and yet managed to be powerful and satisfying at the same time.)

Julia's narrative is filled with desperation, as she tries to learn magic through an unregulated network of magicians with no formal training. Just as the first book managed to capture certain emotional processes wonderfully (such as betrayal), so this one captures obsession and desperation. There is also lots of humor, pop culture references, and endless creativity. (Occasionally Grossman fills a scene with so many creative ideas that it's concentrated delight, as in the contest of swordsmanship competition in this book and the Brakebills entrance exam in the last.) I highly recommend this book. The reading in the unabridged audiobook is excellent.

Note on content: The book has strong language scattered throughout, some fantasy violence, and one harrowing scene of sexual violence.

This book takes its sweet time to get going and there’s lots of unfortunate breaks in action that felt a little deus ex machina but near the end it did move along. I don’t know if it’s worth continuing the series though, nothing essential al here

The book opens with the four rulers of Fillory, a magical land, on a horseback ride into the forest. They're seeking a hare who can predict futures. It's really just a lark, an excuse to have something to do. Then everything turns serious. There is a death and priorities change. Two of the rulers stay home but Julia and Quentin head out for adventure and answers.

Julia's story is riveting, it's beautiful, it's even mystical. She's a hedge witch meaning she's learned her magic alone or with other rogue magicians living in secret safe house, a system not unlike the Underground Railroad. She goes from house to house learning whatever each group knows of the craft. She searches online and finds magical nibbles that are soon erased by big brother. Then she joins an online group of like minded people, some of them are even more damaged than Julia. This group hole's up in a beautiful mansion in Provence. After going down countless tunnels leading nowhere they decide to seek the Goddess. Their journey is lovely as well as terrifying.

Then there's Quentin. Though he loves his life as one of four rulers of his beloved Fillory he's longing for more. That's when a quest presents itself and he can't resist its call. He finds an ancient bewitched boat, repairs it and sets out to parts unknown in search for seven golden keys. Oddly he's not quite sure why he's seeking the keys so he just adds their elusive meaning to his quest check list.

Julia is another of the Fillory rulers and she and Quentin lives weave in and out of one another's finally dovetailing at the ending. I enjoyed this book tremendously though as I said Julia's story packed the biggest punch. I didn't like the ending, or not all of it. I freely forgive Grossman though because he was probably using this ending to set up his next book which I can't wait to read. In case you're wondering, though this book is a sequel to his "The Magician" which I haven't read, I didn't feel lost. He provides enough of the back story to propel you through "The Magician King".

This is the second book after The Magician. It starts off with Quentin, Eliot, Julia and Janet all in Fillory for 2 years now. All Kings and Queens, but all they do is lay around Whitespire eating and drinking and not much else. But, after the Seeing Hare comes running through, Quentin decides to follow it for an adventure. And an adventure is what he gets.

I think at the beginning of the this book, I enjoyed it more than The Magician. The books tells the tale of Quentin and his adventures, but it also goes back in time and tells what Julia was up to during the time Quentin was at Brakebills. You get to understand how she was before she arrived at Fillory and why she is the way she is now. The first half of the book I was really into, but after that Julia's story began to bore me a bit and so did the rest of Quentins story in parts. This book isn't as doom and gloom as the first one though.

The untied ends at the end of The Magician weren't were put together in this one. You don't really get to know how Julia ended up with the other three when they met up with Quentin at the end of The Magician. And they bring up figuring out what Quentin's discipline is at the end of The Magician but it is never brought up at all in this book. It is a completely different adventure. Unless I am missing it somewhere, it is pretty disappointing.

You only really get to know Quentin and Julia more in this book, although there is other characters from the previous novel and a couple new ones, you don't really get to know the characters that much in depth. They only seemed to be there to keep the story going along. There is a couple things that just didn't make sense, like the ending of their quest, it seemed so simple. Overall, it was an okay book in my opinion.

Lev Grossman's second book in his Magicians trilogy picks up several years after the end of the previous installment. Quentin, Elliott, Janet and Julia are the kings and queens of Fillory. Quentin is bored of his life of leisure and ends up seeking with Julia a mythical golden key. The magic door opened by the key brings them back to Earth. Quentin and Julia then seek to return to Fillory. During this time, Quentin and we find out what Julia endured during her magic education. Also, Quentin finally gets the grand quest he desires. To save Fillory and magic from being drained by the old gods from the world.

The chapters on the current quest to save Magic are interwoven with Julia's backstory. After she failed the Brakebills admissions test, Julia's memory was supposed to have been wiped. Unfortunately, inconsistencies enabled her to regain parts, and her desire to learn magic detailed all her carefully laid out plans. Her difficult journey to learn magic through the back rooms, safe houses, and from rogue magic creatures unveiled a very different path from Quentin.

As usual, one of the joys of Grossman's writing is the rich layers of pop culture references. He effortlessly references Tolkien, Die Hard, the Sci-fi role playing game Traveller, Y the Last Man, the popular meditation on math, music and philosophy - Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid, the Matrix, Dan Brown, Gilbert and Sullivan, TGI Fridays, Star Trek, King Kong, and The Wind in the Willows, to name just a few.

After finishing this book, I am eager to read Grossman's 3rd and final installment.

The best part of this book was getting more in depth in the magical world. This isn't Hogwarts, and the examination of how magic affects the world is the most interesting part. Quentin is not interesting. Almost anything involving Quentin, is not interesting. Did you like Chronicles of Narnia's Dawn Treader? Great, there's a boat trip to the end of the world in this one. There are two parallel stories, Quentin's and Julia's. They kind of intersect towards the end, but mostly it's like two separate books were combined into one. There's a rather unnecessary scene that ends the Julia story, though maybe ends isn't really the right word. Something happens, and it no longer matters what happens next. Which about sums up the book. Something happens, and we'll move on to the next thing, whether it be adventure, or in Grossman's case, next book.

I really enjoyed The Magician, and had mixed feelings when I heard Grossman was doing a sequel, hoping it would be a good if not better than the first book, and fearing it would be worse. Thankfully it's the former, a truly enjoyable read, and if you've read the Magicians, this sequel is a must-read!

Our hero in the last book, Quinten, is now enjoying his time as one of the four monarchs of the no-longer-make-believe world of Fillory, except that he's bored and itching for adventure. This being a story, adventure naturally finds him, in ways he of course doesn't expect, despite the fact that he is expecting it. Interwoven through Quinten's story is the backstory of Julia, Quinten's pre-Brakebills high school crush who emerged at the end of the story a witch-on-the-edge in her own right, without the proper magical schooling.

That's the plot. But then, there's the way the author writes it that makes it different. It's a fairy tale that happens to one of us - to you, to me, to your bff, or brother, or roommate from college. It's peppered with modern day references which makes it great for someone of my generation who grew up on all of those movies and stories (Narnia to Harry Potter to Blade Runner to Die Hard, Bugs Bunny to Dr Who, and probably other references I missed). It's got great humor - slightly cynical, slightly self-defeating, great turns of phrase, great characters old and new.

As with the Magicians, the story is a bit uneven. A few places dragged, but in a few places when it was great, it was GREAT! I mean, fantastically great, like this guy has got some talent great, like why isn't the rest of the story like this great (kind of like Quinten at that part where.... oh never mind, that would be spoilerish, wouldn't it?)! In a few places I though I saw parallels with the story which were either a) intentional but really too subtle to seem masterful, or b) accidental which would be disappointing on the author's part. They seemed more like a sense of deja vu, like hey, didn't we already go through this scene a few chapters back?

I want to give it five stars, as it's the story I wish I wrote, and/or it's the story that was written for someone like me, in my generation, for whom references to Bugs Bunny or Die Hard or Hogwarts are part of the vocabulary and though process. But in all honesty, it's got a few flaws, a few minor imperfections that prevent this really, really good story from being among the Greats. I have not read Codex, the author's first novel, but there is definitely a growth and maturity in writing from Magicians to Magician King, a palpable, enjoyable maturity. I look forward to more of Grossman's work.

As for the sequel, I say "Dude, depressing much? There damned well better be!"

I'm not sure what book all the 4 and 5 star ratings read, but it wasn't this. It jumped all over the place, was poorly organized, and generally a disaster of a read. I'm going to read the third book in hopes it salvaged this travesty, but I'm not holding my breath.

I literally just this moment got done reading The Magician King, and I enjoyed it so much I was compelled to write an the store review, which I've not done in years.

5 Stars, OK, maybe 4.5 stars, but round up because it leaves you wanting more.

I won't rehash and outline the plot, as there are others that can do that better than I. I will instead just write about how I felt about the book, the reading of the book, the ending of the book, and what I feel now that it is finished. I felt a little disconcerted at the start, as to me there was some time between the end of The Magicians and the beginning events of The Magician King. I'd even re-read The Magicians a few months ago, in preparation for this one. I had to acclimate to the transition between the two books, but once I did, it was fine. That's pretty much the only complaint I had with the book. I loved reading it, and I even enjoyed the alternating narratives, bouncing between Quentin and Julia. I have to say, while Quentin is the main guy here, and his story is thoroughly enjoyable, I found myself really getting in to the Julia chapters, more than I expected I would. I enjoyed the ending, which I won't get into in case you've not read the book yet, but I like how things ended, but still set the pins back up for a third book. I felt all kinds of influences here: CS Lewis, Neil Gaiman, Douglas Addams, Piers Anthony to name a few. All in positive ways. Now that it is over, I have a nice warm feeling, a smile on my face, and a sense of loss that the story is over, hopefully only till the next one.

I slogged through it- it had some high points. Modern and snarky and well paced and all that. Lev isn't a *hit writer and you can still tell that much. But I really, really despised Julia and her backstory. I actually skipped through her scenes a lot. I think her story is what ruined the book for me, reading about someone you just don't like is painful..

Once more with a not-so-satisfying conclusion to a tumult of events that held promise. Certain win/fail conditions feel shoe-horned in without any real explanation, which was perhaps fine in Christopher Plover's books, but a more discerning audience will see them for what they are. Still worth a read if you're at all invested in the series.

Spoilery:
Julia's story was an interesting departure, but her ultimate apathetic celestialness is unbecoming.

After reading the trilogy, I was pleasantly surprised to see that Lev focused ½ his time on another character. Lev develops the story of this other major player in his books to show what was doing on during the time Quentin was away at Brakebills.

You may have seen my review on the first book of this trilogy and how [boring] Quentin was as a character. This trend continues for him. Quentin is supposed to be a very powerful magician by this point of the 2nd book but the moment he finds another magician (especially female) that he perceives as more powerful, he rolls over on his belly for them. Quentin, as a main character is very disappointing and he seems to follow a trend of other underwhelming main characters.

Overall, the book was very enjoyable and better than the 1st book in this trilogy. I find that very surprising as generally you'll find the 1st of any series to be the best. I found it to be quite the opposite in this case. If you've already read the 1st book, The Magician, continue the story of Quentin and his friends as they traipse across Fillory and more.