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The Magicians features Quentin Coldwater, an alienated Brooklyn high school student, who--en route to his alumni interview for Princeton--is instead transported to Brakebills, a college for magic located somewhere "upstate." Brakebills is his chance to escape from a mediocre high school life, spent pining after an unattainable classmate and escaping into "Fillory," the magical world of a British fantasy series called "Fillory and Further." After a five-year course of study in magic, which the author Lew Grossman refreshingly dispenses with in a mere 200 pages, Quentin graduates and moves to New York with his friends. There, he realizes that being a certified magician has done nothing to alleviate his crushing anomie. Now a young adult, he loses himself, not in the Fillory books, but in alcohol. Then one of his classmates--a guy Quentin didn't even like at school--shows up and says that Fillory is real and he knows how to get there. Finally, they will get out of New York and into their dream of Fillory, "a world that has not yet been fucked up by assholes." This does not turn out as planned.

This book is in no way meant to be in the same genre as Harry Potter, Tolkien, or Narnia, though it directly references all three. Instead, it parodizes elements of those books while offering a Bildungsroman about the kind of person who is tempted to escape into them. Quentin is given an education that should equip him to do great things, but he never figures out what to do with his talents and asks very little of himself. He is a sympathetic character while also being mostly unlikeable. It's not surprising that his problems follow him from Brooklyn, to Brakebills, to New York, and beyond; it's no good to believe that things will be different for you in a new place if you haven't changed at all.

Readers seem to be very divided on this book, which is understandable, I suppose, if you're expecting J.K. Rowling and are given Donna Tartt. (I'm not claiming that Grossman is a comparable prose stylist, but the mood is there.) I expected to find it too quirky but ended up loving it. There may be one ending too many and a few slow spots, but I found it consistently funny, in the dialogue and descriptions, and in the overall irony of the plotting. I'd like to reread it, since there are real surprises at the end.