The Magicians

The Magicians
by Lev Grossman (Viking; $26.95)
August 24, 2009

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Keywords
“The Magicians” (Viking; $26.95);
Lev Grossman;
Fantasy;
Novels;
Science Fiction

This gripping novel draws on the conventions of contemporary and classic fantasy novels (most obviously, those of J. K. Rowling and C. S. Lewis) in order to upend them, and tell a darkly cunning story about the power of imagination itself. Quentin Coldwater is a geeky high-school senior in Brooklyn who is convinced that happiness and “the life he should be living” are elsewhere—for example, in the series of nineteen-thirties British adventure novels that he was obsessed with as a child. When Quentin stumbles on a portal that takes him to a college for magicians in upstate New York, he learns that the world depicted in these novels, known as Fillory, is real, and he is forced to square his youthful ideas with the realities that exist there, too—boredom, regret, shame, and despair. Quentin’s journey becomes an unexpectedly mo


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