The Magician King - Lev Grossman

[goodreads]

Title: The Magician King
Author: Lev Grossman
Genre: Fantasy
Rating: 1.5/5
# pages: 400
Date read: January, 2012

Quentin and his friends are now the kings and queens of Fillory, but the days and nights of royal luxury are starting to pall. After a morning hunt takes a sinister turn, Quentin and his old friend Julia charter a magical sailing ship and set out on an errand to the wild outer reaches of their kingdom. Their pleasure cruise becomes an adventure when the two are unceremoniously dumped back into the last place Quentin ever wants to see: his parent's house in Chesterton, Massachusetts. And only the black, twisted magic that Julia learned on the streets can save them.

Most of the book was semi-boring, but okay enough that I wanted to finish it, so I figured it would be a 2-star review... then along came the sucky ending and we're down to just one. A shame too, because I had really liked "The Magicians".

If "The Magicians" was inspired by Harry Potter and C.S. Lewis' "Magician's Nephew" this was inspired more by "The Dawn Treader" - but is unfortunately nowhere near as good. I ended up actually not caring too much about life in Fillory and was much more interested by Julia's life in the safehouses - especially once she made it to Murs.

But even at its best it was unfortunately only "vaguely interesting", so I cannot in good conscience recommend it to anybody.

Comments

[aurillia.livejournal.com]

I really didn't like The Magicians much and had to force myself to finish it, so I definitely wasn't planning on reading this - after reading your review, I'm even more glad of my decision, as it sounds exactly like what I was expecting!

And talk about a self-hateful way of ruining Narnia! The characters are just so awful. At least with Narnia, the kids just got older and it was a really apt analogy (metaphor?), whereas here we have kids who grew up and wanted to go get in as adults without acknowledging that there's a very good reason why they shouldn't be allowed to! But I guess that's part of Grossman's point.

[bogormen.livejournal.com]

I loved The Magicians, but mostly the Brakebill parts of the book, so when the magic of that school wasn't apparent in TMK at all... yeah, a huge disappointment! It's seldom I go from 4 stars to just 1 between a book and its sequel.