Book Review - Lev Grossman's The Magician's Land
The Magician's Land by Lev Grossman
Published by: Penguin Books
Publication Date: August 5th, 2014
Format: Paperback, 416 Pages
Rating: ★★★★★
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Quentin Coldwater saved magic. Quentin Coldwater saved Fillory. So what was his reward? Banishment. Back to Earth. He found his place, his home, his reason for being in a fantastical world and now he's been cut adrift. He goes back to the only other place he's ever thought of as home, Brakebills. Thankfully he's able to get a teaching job there while he studies his only connection to Fillory, a spell he found in the Neitherlands which he can't even begin to understand. He finds a kind of contentment there. But his life is going to face much more upheaval. First his father dies and he leaves Brakebills for the funeral. At "home" he realizes, now, more than ever, how he never fit into the "real" world. Brakebills though won't be his safe haven for much longer. There's a group of students called "The League" founded by Plum Purchas. They mete out justice on those they feel have done wrong. Like Wharton who purposefully withholds libations during dinner. There prank against Wharton goes horrifically wrong. The magical wards protecting Brakebills are endangered. The incursion is someone Quentin knows. It's Alice. But she's a niffin. Plum is expelled and Quentin is fired. Of their own accord they both show up at a meetup looking to hire magicians for a heist. It was inevitable they'd meet on the outside, they're both magicians and they're both in need of money. The heist fails. Spectacularly. Though they end up in possession of a book written by Martin Chatwin. Fillory is calling to Quentin again. Or so he thinks. But maybe this time it's calling to Plum. Because she has a secret. She's Martin Chatwin's great-granddaughter. On her mother's side. The two of them hide out in New York City in a bolthole that Plum has had for awhile in case they're on anyone's radar after the heist. There they discover a spell in Martin's book to create a new magical land. Having nothing better to do they attempt it and instead of getting a mini Fillory they get an eerie mirror version of the house they're staying in which happens to be inhabited by Alice, the niffin. Who Quentin is able to restore to her human body thanks to the spell from the Neitherlands. Something she is very furious about. She saw everything, she knew everything, from the dawn of time until it's demise and now she's stuck in a meat sack which craves bacon. But everything has a purpose and Alice's return coincides with Eliot's. He has come to inform them that Fillory is ending. The apocalypse has begun. There are no keys to save it this time. Though there's Alice. She saw the beginning of Fillory on her "travels" and her knowledge could save Fillory. Can they save Fillory? Rebuild that world? Or do they want to build their own?
For those of us who grew up on The Chronicles of Narnia, The Dark is Rising Sequence, The Chronicles of Prydain, and The Neverending Story, this series was written for us, though with far less nightmare fuel. We might have been jaded by life but after three books, like Quentin, we are able to find the wonder and joy once again in the world. Or find it at least temporarily with an ending reminiscent of the epic cataclysmic nothingness of The Neverending Story that brought back to life a whole world at the hands of one broken little book nerd. A world ended and a new one began. Because of book nerds. Never forget our power. We are legion. Though there's one thing that every book nerd who has read this series has fantasized about and that's actually being able to read the five Fillory and Further books by Christopher Plover. Yes, there's the small matter that they don't exist, nor does Christopher Plover, but Lev Grossman could conceivably write them. In fact if you go on a deep dive into Reddit there are rumors that at one time he considered doing just that. Obviously this never came to be because otherwise I would be reading them right now. Though if they did exist the question arises, would they prove worthy of their supposed compatriots? Could they rise to the level of C.S. Lewis or Michael Ende? Because we have learned a fair bit about The World in the Walls, The Girl Who Told Time, The Flying Forest, The Secret Sea, and The Wandering Dune over the course of Lev Grossman's three books. We've even learned there are secretly two more books; The Magicians written by Jane Chatwin, and The Door in the Page: My Life in Two Worlds by Rupert Chatwin and could they really meet expectations and known storylines? Well, it's this second book by Rupert that we finally get to read in The Magician's Land. And after reading Rupert's account I can safely say that I think Lev Grossman is well capable of this Ploverian feat. Fillory and Further could be real if Lev Grossman would just make it so. While the whole series has callbacks to other famous children's tales, this one felt more real, more like Narnia, if just because of structure, the story within the story. I also really started to think about the Chatwins being real people, not just characters in a book. And how being nobodies in the real world and being kings and queens in Fillory must really fuck with your head. I mean, no wonder Martin became a psycho, the stuff with Plover notwithstanding. I'd never really thought about this disconnect. You go to the magical world and everything is fixed, unless you know C.S. Lewis kills you all. But this series has been all about how magic doesn't fix you, a magical world doesn't make everything right. And while we've seen this again and again, this somehow was the first time it really struck home for me. That disconnect. Not just the coming back to reality and growing up, but the whole, this is really fucked up. And who created this "purity" rule? And how did that get broken, was it because of Martin breaking the rules? Selling his humanity to Umber? And is that how the Brakebills crowd got in? I have questions. I will always have questions. But I also have certainty. Certainty in my love of this series, in the fact that Lev Grossman could write Fillory and Further if he so wanted, and in the fact that magic can be found anywhere because this world is just as fucked up as any imaginary one.
The Magicians by Lev Grossman
