Magicians by Lev Grossman

This was one of those books that for the first time in a while, I had difficulty putting down. I was excited to see what happened next and I really liked the way the book played out.

I'm always one for happy endings that have a semblance of reality. I feel like this particular book had too much of a realistic ending in that people die, someone gets hurt and everyone has to live with the consequences of their actions. I suppose it all makes sense and all but I sort of wish things would have ended differently. I hate it when main characters die, especially ones that I like.

Originally, I didn't like the book as much because I felt like the pacing was too fast - there were entire years that were condensed into a chapter (or was it just several pages?) and things were fast-forwarding way too quickly. It felt like there was a lot Grossman wanted to do/say but he didn't want to turn his book into another Harry Potter series. Perhaps it was just me. Maybe he skipped all the 'boring' details. I wanted to relish in that world a little more.

Although time-wise things were going very fast, I felt like there was too much 'setting' up and perhaps not as much conflict? I think that the realism factor made the story so compelling, but if you think about it from purely the point of view of a plot, you can tell something is brewing for the first 2/3 of the book but you really don't know what. This wasn't the type of suspenseful buildup where you're really curious as to what's going to happen next as much as there's a desultory nature to the way even the characters don't know what they're supposed to do.

However, I thought the ending was pretty cool with how a lot of the questions were resolved with Jane Chatwin. It really brought the story together and the whole idea of "resetting" time to try to get a better "answer" so to speak still only came up with something less than a perfect ending. I think that the realism factor really played well in that sense. In life, it's true - nothing comes out exactly perfect and that's how life just is. But at the same time I thought it was depressing and I generally don't like depressing books because they depress me.

One complaint that I would have besides the pacing is the characters themselves. I mean perhaps I feel like college students aren't that immature and maybe they are but I kept thinking that even as college students, they were still in high school. The fact that when Quentin is in school, he's technically supposed to be in college didn't really process for me. I almost feel like if the setting was in a high school, it would be more fitting. I just felt like their maturity level was too low to be college students. There seemed to be this impression that most of the students didn't know what they wanted to do after they graduated and that there was this emptiness in being a magician. There was nothing to do it seemed.

In the end, the book gave me a lot to think about, which is always a good thing. There were elements in the book that I may not have liked but I feel like those points actually contributed to the novel rather than detracted from it. As for recommendations - I would recommend the novel to non-readers because it is pretty accessible and the pacing is decent enough to keep a non-reader engaged. I'm not sure if I'd ever read it again because I know the ending and I know that I'll probably get depressed after reading it. However, I feel like there may be more to the book than meets the eye so I may come back to it waaaay down the line when I'm bored or something.