Grossman’s book was not only a cracking yarn but also an exploration of the way fantasy entices the reader — especially the teenage reader — with visions of a majestic alternate future, a place where meaningful quests are handed out to those otherwise at sea. The novel mapped the gulf between Quentin’s ideas of heroism and the scary, awful reality of actually being a hero ... Quentin is restless, indecisive, frustrated and frustrating; Grossman, to his credit, isn’t afraid to explore his protagonist’s rougher edges, but hanging out with ever – dissatisfied Quentin can get a little tiring ... Both plotlines in The Magician King look deep into the well of magic in Grossman’s fictional universe, and both central characters learn it’s assuredly not turtles all the way down ...in keeping with the preoccupations and innovations of this serious, heartfelt novel, turns the machinery of fantasy inside out.
The Magician King is a more assured creation. In this sequel, there are still allusions to other works of fantasy, from Lewis’s The Voyage of the Dawn Treader to Doctor Who to Highlander, but these seem to be less satirical jabs than a fanboy’s acknowledgment of his precursors ... This novel is largely about learning limits ... This is an idea familiar to anyone who has read The Lord of the Rings or Harry Potter, and it is a sign of Grossman’s growing strength as a novelist that he is willing to invoke in his revisionary work this most traditional lesson. The Magician King is a rare achievement, a book that simultaneously criticizes and celebrates our deep desire for fantasy.
...Grossman brings a nerd’s depth of arcane knowledge and obsessive confidence to this ambition. He draws on some of the tropes and conceits of the classics of the genre, from The Chronicles of Narnia to the Harry Potter story, melding them into a modern psychological novel to create something entirely new ... After some slow going at the start of the story, the plot widens to involve saving not only Fillory but magic itself ... The Magician King is a dark and disturbing book on many levels ... Grossman’s third-person narration closely echoes the inner lives of his characters, but after a while, the constant swearing empties the language as readily as a cliche.
...The Magician King follows Quentin Coldwater and his friends on their adventures through an imagined world called 'Fillory,' as well as a magical, booze-infused underground on good old Earth. And like its predecessor, The Magician King (just out in paperback) is surprisingly, almost subversively ambitious ...both engages with and defies the genre, and in doing so kicks down the imaginary partition separating fantasy from not-fantasy (otherwise known as serious literary big-boy writing) ... If all Grossman was after was a Potteresque adventure that upped the MPAA from PG-13 to R, I’d still be along for the ride. Thankfully he’s set his sights a good deal higher than that ...peoples both books with a cast of brilliant and broken young men and women.
...in the follow-up, The Magician King, Grossman continues Quentin's adventures, taking him from the cozy monotony of his kingship at Castle Whitespire to a sea voyage to the End of the World and back. This time, the knowing, self-referential tone is the same, but Grossman drives his characters from their postcollegiate shallows toward the rocky shores of genuine adulthood ...is a much more relaxed novel than its predecessor. There are plenty of plot complications, character moments and elaborate set pieces, but Grossman seems more confident in his storytelling this time, less concerned with cramming in every cool thing he can think of ...avoids middle-book syndrome (assuming Grossman plans to write more books set in this universe, which seems highly likely) by presenting a tale that builds on what came before while feeling complete unto itself.
His sequel, The Magician King, catches up with our wizard prodigies, now ruling as the kings and queens of Fillory, their reward for rescuing it. The novel begins in ways that parallel The Magicians... It's a classic comedic pratfall but also a pure Aristotelian peripeteia. It's pure Grossman, as well, a moment full of mixed longing, schadenfreude, wit and suspense ...novel's structure is the bravura performance, with the quest in the present crosscut regularly by flashback chapters from Julia's past, the two timelines intersecting at the climax ...a spellbinding stereograph, a literary adventure novel that is also about privilege, power and the limits of being human. The Magician King is a triumphant sequel, surpassing, I think, the original.
...there is a clear sea change between The Magicians and The Magician King; perhaps it is the passage of Quentin’s adolescence, with his ascension to royalty happening simultaneously with the onset of his strange, but ultimately recognizable, young adulthood....upon opening The Magician King, we are once again adrift in Grossman’s meticulously constructed fantasy, a bizarre plateau somewhere between Less Than Zero and The Chronicles of Narnia ... Talented, dim-witted swordsmen swear their fealty to the kings and queens of Fillory, and talking animals chatter alongside people with ease, but it is the growing pains of Grossman’s characters that show the real magic of the novel ... The Magician King’s interest in the morality of magic and the politics of Fillory is more Philip Pullman than J.K. Rowling, a wonderful shift that speaks to Grossman’s ability to write a nuanced series that matures realistically at the pace of its main characters.
The Magician King, like its predecessor, is a quest (this time for a holy relic, like a grail, but actually a series of seven keys), a picaresque tale, an allegory for growing up and discovering the world and becoming an adult. (There is also a fair amount of meditation on what it means to be truly heroic.) ... It is deeper, richer, with more action and adventure, more unsuspected plot twists, as well as more irresistible characterizations ... Grossman, a devilishly seductive writer, evokes classic themes in the Magician books that have haunted literature — and us — since nomadic storytellers began singing narrative songs ...in Quentin Coldwater he has created a hero with serious flaws, for whom self-satisfaction — wholeness — remains just out of reach ... Startlingly original and enormously inventive, these books — and they should be read in order — seem destined to be classics of our perplexing times, perhaps because they mirror them so acutely.
...its sequel The Magician King, with Quentin as a glib monarch in a land far, far away — squint and it looks like Narnia — struggles to find its bearings. The new book has touches of the first's trademark wit...but less of its likability, as the sardonic but vulnerable teens have become snarky, somewhat remote young adults ... Grossman further hampers the pace by telling two stories simultaneously, constantly interrupting one to return to the other ... Veering back and forth between its two stories, even as it careens from location to location in the real world and back again, The Magician King is crammed with plot — but much of it races past, leaving little impression behind.
...we have that sequel, The Magician King, which picks things up a year later, and it's not giving away too much from the first book to reveal that Quentin somehow became King of Fillory and that the pampered life of a monarch in a magical land has started to bore our hero ... The Magician King basically spends half its time charting Quentin's quest, and the other half filling in Julia's backstory, primarily how she acquired her magical mojo without formal training ...the overall plot isn't as compelling as the first book ... Grossman is brilliant at creating brainy, distinct, flawed, complex characters, and nearly as good at running them through narrative gauntlets that inventively tweak the stories that generations have grown up on.
If you loved The Magicians as much as I did, you’ll probably be pleased with The Magician King. Yes, the novelty has worn off a bit, but in exchange you get a story that’s actually more structured and more obviously working its way towards a solid finale than the first novel’s ...most noticeable change in The Magician King is that Julia takes over the spotlight for a good chunk of the novel ...is a deceptively cheerful book, because even if it all seems like a lark for Quentin early on, there’s a darker undercurrent right from the beginning. Regardless, it’s again a highly entertaining book to read because it’s filled with cultural references, from Shakespeare to video games and, of course, lots of fantasy.
...we give you one guess as to why we're now swooning over Lev Grossman's The Magician King, the sequel to his bestselling fantasy novel, The Magicians. If you guessed that the book features a wickedly intelligent, sorcery savvy anti-heroine, you'd be right ...think The Chronicles of Narnia meets Harry Potter, with a side of whiskey... Woven into this journey is Julia's back story, a tale so engrossing it'll have you wondering, 'Quentin who?' ... Julia is no dinky chick sidekick ... In fact, you might even say Quentin is her sidekick. Kudos to Grossman for giving this leading lady the limelight she deserves.
The Magician King, Lev Grossman’s sequel to his inventive, exciting novel The Magicians, lacks the je ne sais quoi of its predecessor ... Grossman deserves real credit for how smoothly Julia’s misadventures line up with the timing of Quentin’s experiences in The Magicians — the unfolding of her growth into a magician, on her own, lines up perfectly with everything that we already saw ...many of the plot points in The Magician King lack that excitement, and feel unfortunately staid ... Less picky readers that loved The Magicians and are likely to love any new adventure involving the same characters will be pleased. For those that aren’t pleased, the disappointing plot and occasionally silly clichés in language will by no means change any minds about Lev Grossman.
Lev Grossman, author of The Magicians and its sequel, The Magician King, might well choose that other classic of British fantasy literature, the Narnia of CS Lewis ... In Grossman's novels, magic isn't so much the key to ultimate power as it is a response to existential ennui and disillusionment. Quentin and his wealthy, magical friends typify a generational response to the core conundrum of the Millennial generation ...story of Julia's dramatic psychological collapse, the abandonment of her perfect academic career, her alienation from her family, and her willingness to do anything, even prostitute herself, to regain what she lost, somewhat steals the show in The Magician King.
The sequel, The Magician King, is a late-20s/early-30s kind of novel. Quentin Coldwater, the wizard who traveled to a mythical land to be its king in the first book, has gotten past most of his misery and settled into bored complacency, wondering whether hanging out in a castle and getting drunk is really all there is to rulership ...is better in almost every way, feels as if it might be even looser in the early going, with plenty of opportunities to worry whether Grossman can pull his narrative together. But once he reaches his devastating climax, neatly knitting together story threads readers won’t have even realized were major plot points, the novel reaches a level of poignancy the first could only hope to attain ...is clearly the middle book in a trilogy, but it’s that rare creature that bridges the gap between tales and still stands on its own.
...did enjoy The Magician King but not to the same extent as its predecessor, it just didn't seem to immerse me in the same way ... Let's start with Quentin, who finds himself bored and listless in the magical kingdom of Fillory. Here I will give the author a back-handed compliment if ever there was one in that so strongly did Grossman bring across Quentin's emotions that I found myself mirroring them ...think this is akin to having a Harry Potter story without Hogwarts - people want and expect it be there because it is not only a place they want to read about, it is also a place they actually want to go to.
The Magician King picks up with our 20-something wizards as kings and queens of Fillory, the Narnia-that-isn’t-Narnia. Their story begins where most fantasies end: the happily ever after ...is a darker, more brooding story than its predecessor. It explores the cruelty of our ambitions and the flimsiness of our dreams. And it continues to poke at the fantasy genre with a pointy stick until uncomfortable truths bleed out ... The framing quest of the novel is to merely return to where they started, and where they weren’t that happy anyway ...is such a wonderful escapist yarn is just another of Grossman’s delicious ironies, a joke that will keep you smiling well after the last page.
Interspersed chapters flash back to Julia’s dark adventures before she reunited with Quentin. She discovered a network of people sharing magical knowledge outside the approved Brakebills framework, and her prodigious skills eventually earned her entrance into an elite circle of brilliant, self-taught magicians... Echoes from The Chronicles of Narnia, in particular The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, continue to reverberate, but Grossman’s psychologically complex characters and grim reckoning with tragic sacrifice far surpass anything in C.S. Lewis’ pat Christian allegory.
Grossman's stylish sequel to The Magicians smoothly fuses adventure fantasy, magic realism, and mythic fiction ... Grossman effortlessly injects innumerable pop culture and literary references (Monty Python, Harry Potter, Pink Floyd, the Lorax, the Teletubbies, etc.) into the fantastical storyline. Mainstream fiction and fantasy fans alike will find this fairy tale for adults rewarding.
