![]() ![]() (The subplot of Plum’s and Quentin’s post-Brakebills operation and their encounter with Betsy comes to mind.) It’s almost as if Grossman is lamenting the loss of the world he created, and needs to revisit every character one last time. Still, some aspects of the novel seem tucked in with the intention of neatly wrapping up threads from other books, rather than serving to organically advance the plot of The Magician’s Land. Perhaps this is to be expected, as it reflects the realities of our everyday lives. Certain events do not seem to serve much purpose, and characters are introduced only to disappear later on. If there is a weakness in The Magician’s Land, it is a certain disjointedness in Grossman’s storytelling. More than Rupert’s tale, though, it serves as Martin’s “backstory,” a belated but layered introduction to Fillory’s mythology. It is an association that has serious consequences for all of the Chatwin children. Grossman, via Rupert, tells the story of Edwardian English children abandoned by their parents and “rescued” by the world of Fillory. The Chatwin children, of course, were the original discoverers of Fillory, and one in particular, Martin, played a key role in The Magicians. Perhaps the most affecting part of The Magician’s Land is an extensive chapter given over to Rupert Chatwin’s diary, written just before his death in North Africa in World War II. All of which is to say that, for all his irony, Grossman is capable of creating truly mysterious and inspiring lands. There is a description of Plum’s and Quentin’s time as whales (it will make sense when you read it) that is especially striking. His attention to the details of his worlds is impressive. His worlds are approachable and do not require extensive exposition in order to understand them. Readers will not find themselves lost Grossman does not overreach. Grossman shifts his perspective from Quentin and Plum (in our world) to Eliot and Janice (in Fillory) and back again, without losing the thread. If that all seems like a bit much, well, it is, but Grossman handles it much more adeptly than I. Which, it should be said, is dying, and can’t be saved. Quentin and Plum are dismissed from Brakebills and take up “mercenary” work, a path that will ultimately lead them back to Fillory. Plum inadvertently summons into Brakebills a niffin (demon) not unknown to Quentin–Alice, last seen at the end of The Magicians. Needless to say, things fall apart: A prank played by a student, Plum, on one of her peers goes awry, and Quentin is implicated. He finds his way back to Brakebills and becomes an adjunct professor, learning his focus (minor mendings), teaching, and working on a project inspired by a stray page captured in the Neitherlands (sort of a transdimensional interchange). ![]() Cast out of Fillory by the ram-god Ember, Quentin is a young(ish) man adrift when The Magician’s Land opens. Readers know that Quentin Coldwater, Grossman’s protagonist, and his friends survived Fillory in The Magicians and became its kings and queens in The Magician King. To top it all off, the fairy tale world of Fillory (see: Narnia) turns out to be real, and is at once more horrible and goofy than a reader might expect, unless that reader is revisiting as an adult the books she consumed as a child, and thinking, “Talking animals, huh? I really enjoyed this?” But of course you did it was written with children in mind. Lest readers longing to belong to such a world get all dewy eyed, know that the learning of magic is grueling, arduous process accomplished only by the most brilliant students. Gifted young men and women are spirited off to Brakebills Academy (think Hogwarts, natch) to learn the intricacies of sorcery. In short, The Magicians Trilogy is set in a world in which (surprise) magic is real. Of course, readers unfamiliar with Grossman’s previous work will wonder just what I’m getting at. It’s altogether fitting in these self-referential and hyperaware times that an author tell his story with a wink and a nudge. The cheeky tone of Grossman’s storytelling is likely to have put off readers who take seriously their diversions into fantasy, but it is, ultimately, the right approach: How else to deal with a story that’s been told countless times? How else to avoid maudlin tropes and sentimentality? As Umberto Eco writes in his Postscript to the Name of the Rose, once a sentiment has become wrote, it can only be expressed sincerely via the mechanism of irony. But if Harry Potter’s universe is one characterized by authenticity, by sincerity, then Grossman’s creation is a jaundiced one, not seen through a glass darkly, but ironically. It is apt to compare Harry Potter and the world of The Magicians Trilogy, as the latter is a response to the former, with some Narnia thrown in for good measure. ![]()
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