Warning: Spoilers

When this book was first pitched to me, I was told it was Harry Potter for Adults. If this is what you are expecting from Lev Grossman, you will be extremely disappointed. Sure, it is centered around a school for witchcraft and wizardry, there is a Dumbledore and a Hermione analog, the magical world is parallel but hidden from us muggles. On the surface “Holden Caufield at Hedonist’s Hogwarts” might be a good summary of these books. Those wanting the sweetness of those moments in your childhood, when a brandnew JK Rowling book arrived in the mail, and you spent the next few nights transported to a magical land. Those longing to taste that particular flavor again, will find this trilogy bitter and rancid. But I think that is what the Author intends, infact, that is the central point of the book.

I was also told, the books were about magic as a drug. This might make the books a little more paletable and interesting. I see how you could get that impression from watching the SYFY series, and maybe from the outside, addiction and obsession look the same. But from the internal viewpoint we get of these characters, it’s just obsession. In my mind Addiction is a compulsion that comes from an outside source. While Obsession is internal. Theses characters would be obsessive about physics, computers, or school if they had not discovered magic. I can sympathize with this, if I could personally confirm that so much was missing from physics, It would be a big deal. I would be obsessed too!

The Magicians trilogy is actually a post-modernist tribute to Narnia. It is about growing up and losing that feeling of magic. It is about finding happiness, when you can get whatever you want at the snap of your fingers.

It was only after I realized this did the book become readable.

Quentin Clearwater is a senior in highschool, when he is invited to take the entrance exam for Brakebills school of magical pedigogy. The school recruits from the population of unhappy nerds. Miserable INTPs who are top of thier class, make Escher, Godel, Bach references, and are destined for a physics degree from a top university.

There was one moment in the book that really stood out to me. In it Quenten, is shown to a garden that contains all the thoughts/feelings of the world, represented as plants. Plants bloom and wither, as people think them. I only imagine that some spread like weeds. In this Memetic Garden, Quentin is shown to a particular plant. This plant is the feeling of a child Reading the Filory books for the first time. It has the flavor that we/Quentin have been searching for all this time.