At summer's end, adventure

Alternative universe of 'The Magician King' is elegant, swashbuckling fun

Lev Grossman's books

Lev Grossman's books (August 12, 2011)

Nothing in life is certain anymore — not even death and taxes, thanks to cryonics and a Republican Congress. Thus I can't give you an absolute, ironclad, airtight guarantee that if you hold "The Magician King" (Viking) at just the right angle at just the right time of day and intone a precise series of mysterious words, you will be instantly transported to a new dimension, one filled with beauty and wonder, with danger and joy.

But you might as well give it a shot.

Lev Grossman's new novel, the sequel to his delectable 2009 best-seller, "The Magicians," inspires just that sort of exhilaratingly unrealistic thinking. It's a Harry Potter series for the people who already miss the kid, even while the film version of the final book is still in theaters. It's "The Catcher in the Rye" for devotees of alternative universes. It's dazzling and devil-may-care.

And it had a strange effect on me. Never before have the tangible parameters of a book — its geographical coordinates, its location in space and time — proved so crucial. Typically, while making my fitful way through a review copy, I leave it lying around the house just as I might an empty coffee cup or a shucked-off sandal, knowing it will turn up later.

But each time I lost track of "The Magician King," I became nervous. Antsy. Discombobulated. My fingers felt jittery, like the digits of a jazz pianist who's aching to play but misplaced his instrument.

Once I found it again, I could relax. Opening "The Magician King" at the place mandated by my bookmark, I had the sensation that — how can I put this and still retain my credibility as a serious critic? — the book had somehow been waiting for me to come back to it, that until I picked it up and resumed my reading, the pages beyond my bookmark had all been blank. The very act of reading "The Magician King" brought "The Magician King" to life.

OK, so perhaps I've been reading too often in the hot sun these days.

But believe this: Grossman has created a rare, strange and scintillating novel. It features talking dragons and magic spells and high adventure in faraway lands — but it also includes a good number of headfirst plunges into ordinary human experience, into love and pain and loss, into jealousy and melancholy, so that ultimately there is nothing childish or whimsical about "The Magician King" whatsoever. Like Shakespeare's "Tempest," the magical parts render the work more, not less, serious.

In "The Magicians," Grossman introduced the world of Fillory. The novel's main character, a precocious young man named Quentin, had always assumed that Fillory — like Neverland or Hundred Acre Wood — lived only in his favorite storybooks, but his arrival at Brakebills, a boarding school for budding magicians, suggests otherwise. Fillory is real. And so are its perils.

When "The Magician King" opens, Quentin is one of four rulers of Fillory. He loves the dynastic trappings: "He wore black leather boots up to his knees, different-colored stockings, and a long navy blue topcoat that was richly embroidered with seed pearls and silver thread. ... A glittering side-sword bumped against his leg." Yet he yearns for more than a cool outfit. Soon Quentin and his fellow monarchs embark on a mission.

Each member of the royal quartet is bright and arch and sarcastic, blessed with an apparently inexhaustible fund of pop-culture references. They talk about iPhone apps and Starbucks, Monty Python and Arthur C. Clarke. Spells and incantations are described not with spooky, mist-encircled awe but with down-to-earth drollery:

"Becoming invisible was a simple idea in theory, but in practice it was a lot harder than you'd think. It fell into the same magical blind spot as altering one's appearance. Historically it had been done, but it took years of meticulous self-erasure, and once accomplished it was practically impossible to undo; apart from anything else you tended to die of old age before you finished restoring your original appearance."

When Quentin, midway through the book, fears that he has been exiled from Fillory forever, you'll feel what he feels: panic and dread. Like Quentin, you'll do whatever you have to do to return.

Fortunately, readers need not unsheathe any glittering swords to make it happen. All that's required is opening a book — and recognizing that, as Lily Tomlin used to say, reality is just a collective hunch.

Twitter @litkell


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