Mundane Magicians
I’ve heard this book described as Harry Potter for grown-ups, if you want a simple storyboard level analogy that lots of people can relate to, then it would be appropriate: College age student is informed that they have magical powers and is whisked into a hidden world within our world, complete with magical boarding school, the adult bit comes with the inclusion of sex and alcohol. When you get down to the details, it’s a bit more complicated, so if I was choosing a book to compare this to on a deeper level, I think I’d go with The End of Mr. Y by Scarlett Thomas. Therein lies my problem, scale, if I recommend this book with the line “It’s similar to The End of Mr. Y”, I get a puzzled look, a shrug of the shoulders and an “Eh?” if I try “it’s a bit like Harry Potter for grown-ups” people start paying attention, despite the fact that it really isn’t.
Unlike Harry Potter which is a nice, wholesome, good versus evil, love will always conquer hate affair, The Magicians doesn’t feature an acute, all pervading Dark Lord character for the hero to battle against. Instead there is internal conflict with the main character, Quentin Coldwater, veering between narcissism, bouts of insecurity and self-hatred, he sabotages everything good in his life either deliberately or through neglect, whilst waiting for some indefinable event to kick start his life. In short, he’s whiny and annoying, so there’s one similarity to Harry Potter. The other major characters exhibit enough vices and character flaws to keep a psychiatrist busy several afternoons a week, with the odd exception (and by odd, I mean one, Alice) I found them to be thoroughly charmless and myself apathetic to their fates.
One of the more interesting facets of this book is magic itself, Grossman describes a system similar to really complicated mathematics, magic isn’t a gift you’re born with, it requires intelligence first to discover and then further hard work to master. It’s very different to the wide eyed wand waving and bastardised Latin found elsewhere, in fact it seems that it’s so difficult that very little magic actually gets done. There’s a few significant moments dotted throughout the book, but before the last quarter I struggle to recall more than a few instances of insubstantial magic performed by Quentin or his peers, there is though plenty of talk about magic.
The Magicians is a story about obsession and depression, substance abuse and self-loathing. It’s not a fantasy novel in the classical mode, so little of it involves actual magic that it’s more like magical realism, if you told me that the whole story turned out to be the drunken imaginings or the escapist hallucinations of the main character, I wouldn’t be surprised (as far as I’m aware though, that’s not the case).
The strongest feeling that this book elicited was a sense of inadequacy, I suspect that I’m just not smart enough to fully comprehend what the author is saying, perhaps I need to be intelligent enough to perform magic in order to ‘get it’. Despite that it’s an adequate enough diversion from real life, that I’ll give the sequels a read, however perhaps because of the esoteric nature, lack of likable characters I never really warmed to it. Interesting but not enchanting, which for a book about magicians is a bit of an anti-climax.
The Magicians – Amazon – Book Depository
If you’ve read and enjoyed this book, then I really would recommend looking up The End of Mr. Y by Scarlett Thomas, they’re remarkably similar in tone.