The Magician King [Hardcover]

Can it possibly be only two years since I read Lev Grossman's The Magicians? If you asked me about that novel, I would immediately tell you that I loved it. Apparently, that's about all I could tell you. Having just read Grossman's engaging follow-up, I regret not having reread, or at least brushed up on, the first novel. References to prior events were plentiful, and rather than jog my memory, they highlighted just how fallible it is. Hopefully yours is better, or you will take the steps I didn't prior to reading the sequel. Oh, and it goes without saying that if you haven't read the first novel, don't start with this one.

Nonetheless, my inexact memory did not keep me from enjoying the latest adventures of Quentin Coldwater et al. Even I recalled that at the end of The Magicians Quentin, Julia, Elliott, and Janet had left our world to become the co-queens and kings of the magical (and not fictional after all) land of Fillory. The end. I thought that was the end. It was a good ending, and I didn't expect any more. As we catch up with Quentin and co., they are living their "happy ever after." It's glorious. It's perfect. It's boring. To some degree, this has ever been the issue of life in a magical world.

Quentin is itching for a quest, but this is countered by the reasonable fear of screwing up a perfect life. When a safe-looking mini-quest comes along, Quentin goes for it--and screws up his perfect life. The mini-quest evolves into a major-quest with the highest of stakes. While this primary drama is unfolding, there is a second story being told in reflection. The Magicians recounted the education and coming of age of Quentin, Elliott, and Janet. Finally we learn what "hedgewitch" Julia was doing all of those years, and how she learned her craft. It would be an understatement to say that she took a different path. It's a fascinating counterpoint. Along the way of these twin narratives, we meet many new characters and revisit old ones.

I've now read three of Mr. Grossman's four novels, and I've enjoyed all of them. If I had to pick out the one thing that sets his work apart, the word that comes to mind is "unpredictability." When you read as much as I do, a lot of storytelling becomes formulaic. This isn't always a bad thing. Formula can expedite storytelling or give shape to a narrative. In any case, I think most avid readers begin to get a feel for where a story is likely to go. But not with Mr. Grossman. I never know. I don't have a clue. I just know that he's going to pull something different and unexpected out of his magician's hat.

Additionally, it's always a pleasure to read his prose. And he's a champion at world-building. I adore the world he's created in Fillory, and the dozens and dozens of pop culture references found throughout the text increase the fun and anchor that world to the reality of our own. It's not merely Rowling and Lewis and Tolkien. It's Die Hard and Star Trek and D & D. It's Elmer Fudd, Dr. Suess, and GEB. It's Disney, Dr. Who, and Discworld--and too many more to ever list.

I've rated this novel down one star only because I didn't love it quite as much as its predecessor. I had the opportunity to speak to Mr. Grossman briefly at BEA. Expressing surprise at the sequel, I asked if there would be more books in the series. He told me that he thinks there will be a third, making it a trilogy. This second book comes to a shocking and unresolved conclusion. So, to Lev Grossman I say, "Damn straight there will be a third book!" It can't end like this. And while clearly I have NO idea where the tale will go, I WILL be along for the ride.

After hearing about "The Magicians" on NPR, I picked up the first book in this series and was completely enthralled. It was a rewarding exploration of a problem that is rarely addressed--what could possibly motivate a character who, through power or technology, can address every level of Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs...except, of course, for those difficult-to-get ones like meaning, self-knowledge, and so on. It was a Postmodern Harry Potter (I mean that in only the nicest possible way)--ironic, disdainful of happy endings, and realistic.

At this point, the only seriously negative review of this book on Amazon points out that it's thick with in-jokes and pop culture references. And it is, and in a certain sense that's an easy, jarring, almost parasitic sort of humor, I can see how it might seriously put a wrench in one's suspension of disbelief. But in Grossman's world the device adds to the feeling of being immersed in the geek/internets jaded, referential culture--and I think it reflects how Grossman's characters, at least at the beginning of their story arcs, are consumers rather than producers. Until we meet Julie, our wizards are fonts of received wisdom, brilliant students perhaps, but inward-focused beasts more enthralled with their own wit and personal tragedies than putting their near-omnipotence into any meaningful use. I'm strongly reminded of Pamela Dean's "Tam Lin" title, where the characters spin delightful chains of wit, fabulous crystals of logophilia that could only develop in the zero-G environment of fiction.

Aaanyway...I did love this book, it might actually have been as good a story as the first. But it was a bit "more of the same," without the magic of discovery of the first book--for the characters (well, except for Julie, her "origins" story carries through the book and keeps the sparkle of the new in the title), and for the reader, who is now already aware of the epidemic of Weltschmerz in the magical community. It was a solid book, but the first one was fresh and new, the second is a happy return to the first one's ideas--and probably not a very satisfying stand-alone novel.

The title leans rather heavily on Narnia, and a lot of the fun of the book was in how those ideas were woven into this title in a big way--if the first book was 30something JK Rowling, the second is the same for CS Lewis. I'm not sure if this is a bad thing, but I am reminded of why the "Allegory" literary style died out--creating 1:1 correspondences is a little artless. I'm absolutely not saying that this was the case here, I felt that the book used Narnia tropes in a most satisfactory way, but if a college professor (or an amazon reviewer) wrote "derivative, see me" on this thesis, they could make a solid case for an A-, or even a B+.

The concept that drew me to these two books was that they're an adult literary treatment of a concept that has largely been addressed with either young adult or pulp adult writing and characters. I feel like The Magicians squeaked by in meeting that criteria (although the moral center did not hold). The Magician King does not. I think this does work as pretty good fantasy. There's a good deal of inventiveness, plot twists based on the created rules of the world, characters we basically care about. There's one very high quality creation in the gods which is severely underexploited. But overall, it's not great fantasy.

But it is definitely not literary. The quality of the writing has dropped significantly from the first book, and a great deal of it seems plain lazy. I don't think any of this would bother me except for the fact that I think Lev Grossman has the chops to do this right. There have been astounding sequences - e.g. Brakebills South, and I think that LG has brought a character to the page that is new to literature but common to life - nose to the grindstone type, with the realistic tradeoffs that are made to become good at something. There's a working metaphor with magic and writing that is working under the surface that he is able to tap to create a credible portrait of a teenager learning to become a powerful magician. That's no mean feat.

The book that comes to mind, and that I'm probably unfairly expecting, is The Corrections. The Corrections starts in the slang and quotidian of the suburbs, but elevates that life to literature. I think part of the reason that this works is that The Corrections knows what it is: literature. There's a burden on it to raise and explore a moral question, and if not to answer it, then to suggest why the answer is difficult to arrive at.

The Magicians starts in that vein, and there are legitimate moral questions to address: how do you live life without magic, once you know it exists? That's a fantastic metaphor, and something that almost all of us address in our lives when we see people operating in a profession that we are unable to break into. How many actors are there trying to get a movie? How man movie stars that want to direct? A lazy example, but we all have them, barring perhaps a very few that succeed on their own terms in their chosen field.

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Does the Magicians end on that note and address the question, no, it steps away by whisking Quentin into magicland as soon as the answers get difficult. Does the Magician King? Maybe, but credits roll immediately, so there's no exploration of a viable answer. Every time somebody almost loses magic, they get it back, so the author himself seems to be having a hard time getting off the (magic) sauce. Good luck for his characters.

There's some sort of moral teaching about sacrifice and maturity, but that doesn't rise to the level of interesting for me. More importantly, it's not a question that has to be answered with this world, magic doesn't have that much to do with it. You could bring up the same thing in a GI Joe cartoon if you left out the parachutes.
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In the end, I feel like these books don't know what they want to be. When there's a difficult moral question, magic resolves it or alleviates it. When there's a time to dazzle with imagination, there are ironic borrowings (sure, they're allusions) to suggest that the book is a literary commentary on the genre. In the end, neither the criteria for literature or fantasy are quite satisfied. It works as decent fantasy with some gen x, bordering on y material, but I'm too old to be reading something like that, and in the end, I'm a little embarrassed I spent my time this way.