My Review
Discounting comics, The Magicians is only the third piece of fiction I’ve read this year, after reading only one novel in 2009. One of the reasons is that fiction isn’t easily read in short pieces over a long period, which is about the only way I can get any pleasure reading into my schedule during school. I was fortunate enough to get a brief vacation over Memorial Day, and was able to sit down with this one for a few hour-long stretches.
Quentin, a high school senior, is a first-rate genius. As happens with most unusually smart high school students, he doesn’t succeed socially—in fact, he’s a depressive wreck. He escapes the melancholy of his real life by fleeing to Fillory, which is basically Narnia without all the religious over- and undertones. It serves as Quentin’s place of refuge when the disappointments of life get the better of him.
His other escape is magic. Not the real thing, of course, but the illusions, deception, and sleight of hand that we call magic. As it turns out, Quentin was, in fact, doing real magic—he just didn’t realize. Someone picked up on it, though, and he suddenly found himself on the campus of Brakebills, a highly selective academy for the practice of (real) magic.
