The Magicians

[metonomia]

The Questing Beast was a White Stag. There were four thrones.  There were seven friends.  There was a Neitherworld, with pools of water.  There was a Deeper Magic (or whatever the heck he called it.  Does it even matter? It was so obvious what was being referenced.)  There was an effing cave with a grave in it in memoriam to a god.

I can't wrap my mind around this book right now.  I feel like something fundamental to my being has just been ripped out from my soul, and I don't even know what it is.  Am I upset that the real world was made out to be horrible and unbearable and lesser?  Am I upset that the magical fantastical world was then also made out to be horrible and evil?  I don't even know.

In any other Circumstance I would have loved this book.  God, if he'd tried maybe a minuscule amount to not practically quote Narnia?  I would have loved this.  Maybe the problem is that I went into it expecting to find Harry Potter (the company is called Grunnings. Good lord.) and Narnia references.  But honestly?   This feels like that sort of well-written but unpalatable fan fic that's sort of pretending to be original but is also clinging to the source material but is changing it a little but not enough. If he'd just not made it so obviously Narnia!  I marked pages of interest as I went through, using lollipop wrappers - red for general interest, blue for Narnia references.  There is a lot of blue.

The red marks things of interest, which mainly boils down to - the things that made me want to alternately cry and hit something, or just to think really deeply.  For example, gender relations.  Which I have been really hyped up about lately, I know, and I'm trying to take everything I'm thinking right now with a grain of salt because after all it's 2am and this is only my first read and I had preconceptions going into it, but.  I find myself upset about how every single female character was treated.  A lot of the boys, too, in fact.  Also I am annoyed by a lot of the family-relations stuff in here.  Namely, the fact that Grossman (or at least his characters - I don't really know how much they can be separated.  I'll need to go read interviews and such) seems to be purporting that every single family is horribly screwed up and that it's impossible to tell your parents about a life-changing and difficult and magical experience you have stumbled upon.  That all children are somehow screwed over by their parents whether it's because the parents are in love or are not in love.  

And wtf the ending?  Am I supposed to be pleased that Julia magically popped back up again and alalala let's all jet off back to the magic land that we discovered was so horrible and life-sucking because we can, whooo, let's go escape the real world once again!  There's no reason!  He spent the whole book hyping up how Quentin needed - possibly more than air or water or food - for magic and for Fillory to be real, and then he tore it all down and Quentin realized that Fillory was bad and magic was bad and people were bad, and then, just like that, it's all better again.  I am dumbfounded.  I have no idea what to do with this.  I now understand what bedlamsbard meant when she said it's as though Peter became a monster and Lucy turned into the White Witch.

And you know what else? I really really liked the first part, before the whole Fillory debacle.  It was really cool, and it was super original, I thought - obviously referring to and drawing from Harry Potter and, to my eye at least, The Mysterious Benedict Society - but really awesome nonetheless.  But what got to me in there, mainly, was the whole thing about how the only people worth anything are the geniuses.  What I love so so much about Doctor Who is that the companions are not the movers and the shakers.  They are shopgirls, temps, ordinary people who are nonetheless awesome and inventive and strong and compassionate and they go around and they save the freaking universe.  Here, we are very firmly told that the only way - the only way EVER that you get to have this sort of experience is if you are the smartest of the smart.  Even Julia, who gets left behind, is still one of the smartest of the smart - and look! She gets to come back at the end!  Quentin's parents?  His editor father and painter mother?  They are self-absorbed shadowy villains.  And I know, these privileged, genius kids have issues too, I get that - and I see how one possible message to take from this is that it actually sucks to be them, because their childhood fantasies came back to bite them, literally, and this gift of theirs ended up ruining life for them.  But still.  Harry Potter - you can be anyone.  The entire message of that series is that blood has nothing to do with it, that brains have nothing to do with it.  You can be the daughter of dentists, the chubby dumb kid, the poor youngest brother, the loony outcast - it doesn't matter, magic can be in anyone and anyone can do great things.  The Magicians, on the other hand, tells me that if I am not the best of the best, the most smart, the most charismatic, the most beautiful, the most special - then nothing special will ever come to me.  Or - it will, maybe, but I will still never have it because I won't be good enough to use it.

Okay, this is a weird place to cut off, but it's really late and I'm exhausted.  Anyone who's read this book, I'd love to hear your thoughts.