Aug 8 2011 3:30pm

Making Utopia Interesting: Spoiler-Free Review of The Magician King by Lev Grossman

The Magician King by Lev GrossmanAt the end of Lev Grossman’s The Magicians (which I wrote about here), Brakebills graduate Quentin Coldwater abandoned a cushy but dead-end insecure job to become co-ruler of the magical land of Fillory with his former classmates Eliot and Janet and his erstwhile flame Julia. I absolutely loved the drama of that final scene, with Eliot, Janet and Julia hovering thirty stories up in the air and shattering Quentin’s office window to drag him along on this new adventure. (But did anyone else think that Quentin stepping off that ledge sounded a bit like someone committing suicide, or was that just me?)













Stefan Raets reads and reviews science fiction and fantasy whenever he isn’t distracted by less important things like eating and sleeping. Many of his reviews can also be found at Fantasy Literature

Ross Smith
1. Ross Smith
Well, I liked The Magicians, and will definitely be picking this one up.

With all the literary and media references Grossman keeps putting in the books (see his earlier article), I just realised that it may not be coincidence that Julia has the same name as Merlin's ex-girlfriend in the Amber books. Who also surprised her ex by suddenly turning up later as an unexpectedly powerful wizard.
Stefan Raets
2. Stefan
That is a great point, Ross. I wonder if that was intentional or not.
Ross Smith
3. jere7my
You intended to spoil the ending of The Magicians in your opening sentence, did you?
Stefan Raets
4. Stefan
It's in the plot summary that's on the inside flap of the novel and on Amazon and other sites, jere7my.
Ross Smith
5. jere7my
And that's why one doesn't read the plot summary of a sequel before reading previous books in the series. ("After learning that Darth Vader is his father....") And of course I shouldn't have begun reading this review either, but I didn't know The Magician King was a sequel to anything before I read the first sentence. I can't really stop my eyes from sucking up meaning as I'm scrolling down a web page, anyway; is usually quite good about spoiler protection.

You spoiler-protected the discussion of The Magicians that you posted last week ("Be warned: this post contains major spoilers for The Magicians"). It seems odd that you would post its climax as the first line of an open review with "Spoiler-Free" in the title; if The Magicians was worth avoiding spoilers for last week, it should be worth avoiding spoilers for this week as well.

I mean, it's not my blog; you can post whatever you like. But I was planning to read The Magicians; now I'm unlikely to, because I'll have THIS IS HOW IT ENDS blinking in neon over the page if I do. If your intention was to turn people on to books you're clearly enthusiastic about, you missed the mark with me.
Stefan Raets
6. Stefan
I'm sorry to hear that, jere7my. I try to avoid spoilers in my reviews in general, but I consider what's in the plot summaries on the actual books fair game. (In this case, I was actually surprised that that plot summary gave away what could have been a really effective surprise about 100 pages into this new novel - I hinted at it in the review but didn't explicitly say what it was.)

However, setting up the new novel by describing its starting point is a fairly common thing to do in reviews of series books, I'd say - and the various people who check what reviewers write before it actually gets published on the site seem to agree.

I still hope you'll check out the novel - in this case, it's very much one that's more about the journey than the destination.
Ross Smith
7. outgrabe
jere7my - I have to say that having that bit of the ending spoiled really won't have ruined anything about your reading of "The Magicians." It's roughly equivalent to, like, going into "Empire" knowing that Han gets frozen in the carbonite - it's big, but it doesn't deter from your enjoyment of it.

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