The Magician King (and the confusion it has caused me)

[altogetherisi]

Non-spoilery thoughts about The Magician King. Contains information that might be considered generally spoilery for plot twists in the previous book, The Magicians.

The Magician King left me confused. It wasn't exactly what I was expecting. On the other hand though, it was the book I had the highest hopes for, the most excitement, so maybe that was unfair, maybe the tinted my view of this book somewhat.

Overall, I think I liked The Magician King, but not as much as I immediately loved The Magicians and I think overall it was less clear concept wise - The Magicians has this amazing premise, though not huge amounts of plot, that the book revolves around. And that works, IMO, wonderfully. The Magician King has more plot, but no more sit-up-and-pay-attention premise, so it feels a bit different from The Magicians for the reason. And that makes sense, a sequel can't just repeat the first one, but yeah, this book feels different.

Also, it's told differently, because unlike The Magicians, The Magician King has two parallel narratives; the first goes forward from the end of The Magicians, following Quention in Fillory and his endless quest to find an adventure, and the other following what happened to Julia in the past, during the previous book. For the most part I liked both of these strands, and I certainly liked that the book was shaped like this (yay parallel naratives!) but a) there was something spoilery that happened at the end of Julia's strand that I think was unnecessary, problematic and a bit stupid, which IMO cheapened it and generally disappointed me and left a bad taste in my mouth; and b) I thought the end of Quentin's plotline was a bit sudden, abruptly unhappy and while intellectually and sort of ironically made sense, emotionally felt unfair and left me feeling a bit angry. Which might have been the point, but still, there were unhappy, negative emotions where I had hoped for pure joy and happiness, and basically I'm still confused. It's a good book; it's well written, interesting, but essentially I didn't get an ending I would have wanted, and I acknowledge that perhaps that was what Mr Grossman intended, demonstrating that he can make both characters and readers unhappy, for which, if that is the case, well done, you succeeded, but regardless that doesn't lessen the "not massively happy" feelings.

Probably, I was always going to be disappointed, because I loved The Magicians so much and because I spent a year waiting and expecting this one to be absolutel awesome. Plus, when I first heard that he was writing a sequel I thought that was weird, because The Magicians had felt so complete, so whole to me. It didn't really build on the foundations o The Magicians, it's more like an extension, going of in a diferent irection. It certainly has its merits just, it generally wasn't what I expected somehow.

On the other hand, had I written this review as I went along, before I read the ending, it would have been much more clearly positive. I spent the vast majority of this book wanting more Eliot very happy and pleased. I really don't want to be spoilery, so I will say nothing more specific than I loved where the character went, who they met there and what they said and did to and with each other. OK, that tells you nothing at all, ha. Here are some details in a non spoilery fashion; dragons! swords! boats! tattoos! sloths! passports! fairytales! taxes! golden keys! crashing a party! magic! And of course, my favourite - banter! And all of this, I loved. Honestly, there was plenty of this book that I enjoyed. That shouldn't be forgotten in the midst of my emotional response and confusion over the ending. Let's get this absolutely clear - I had an emotional response because I loved the book and the characters. OK? OK.

Quibble: THERE WAS NOT ENOUGH ELIOT. I know Eliot isn't meant to be the main character BUT WHATEVER I NEED MORE ELIOT I MY LIFE OK. I may have a problem. Perhaps Lev Grossman does this on purpose to tease me. Seriously though, I just want an Eliot spinoff or something, IDEK, where Eliot just goes on a quest and hits on lots of people and stuff. MORE ELIOT because he's awesome and I love him.

There was also a surprising lack of Janet, but I didn't miss her all that much. Oops. Some old characters came back when I wasn't sure they would, some for cameos and some for large parts, and there were some cool new characters - my favourites were Benedict, a Fillorian cartographer/teenage boy with floppy hair and Poppy, an Australian witch that likes "the real world" and dragons and isn't massively impressed with interdimensional travels to Fillory. I wasn't massively into Julia's friends and acquaintences, I mean some were good and stuff, they just weren't my favourites, but other people are free to like them. I didn't hate them, I just didn't care much about many of them. I cared about Julia, but also I tended to rather disapprove, pity and look down upon hedgewitchery as if I'd gone to Bakebills myself. Oh dear, I was probably supposed to admire it and their resolve and initiative or something. I am such a snob.

I thought for the most part the way Grossman wrote Julia's relationship with her sexuality was interesting, unusual and something I'd like to discuss more sometime, and ditto her relationship with he family ties, the religious aspects of the book and Julia's depression - how Grossman treats it, and how Julia considers it. Julia's depression is rather different from Quentin's, and I really appreciated that and think it's something I'd like to explore thinking about more.

I suppose really, at its heart, The Magician King is a discussion about, an examination of, even a parody of Fillory-esque books themselves, in a way that The Magicians never was. The Magicians was more an examination of Quentin's character, and this is an examination of that which Quentin's character loves, that being Fillory books. Quentin goes to another world, Quentin has an adventure, stuff happens. I find the ending rather easier to accept in this context, that for better or worse Quentin always wanted to end up in one of these books, and now he has. Warts and all. Still though, it feels a little cruel.

Quentin himself is a bit different from in The Magicians - there was more than one moment when I wanted to jump up and exclaim "miracle of miacles! Quentin is growing up!" or "oh my god, Quentin is satisfied, I never thought to see the day!" or "Quentin, are you learning from your past mistakes? I'm so proud!" However, this cannot be mentioned without also mentioning there were moments - at the end particularly - when I was really expecting Quentin to show some maturity or whatever, be new!Quentin but instead was unapolgetically stupid!Quentin, and that made me feel disappointed, practically personally betrayed, and like banging my head against the wall. And I don't know why Lev Grossman wrote it that way. Maybe he's saying that character development takes time, and is inconsistent as it develops, that maturity and immaturity can fluctuate senselessly within individuals. Maybe he felt that some ways of reacting to scenarios are just inalienable parts of our character. But it happened more than once and it left me disappointed and feeling like character growth had been regressed and disregarded and just plain thrown away at times, and that left me disappointed and a bit irritated and betrayed. Maturing!Quentin was a precious revelation to me, but he didn't get the triumphant moment of validation I was hoping and expecting the end of the book would give him/me. So. Sadface.

This leaves me in a strange place recommendation wise. I liked it, but I might have ben happier without it. I think it would be silly to read it if you haven't read The Magicians, and there's about an even chance IMO that you might either like it more or less than The Magicians, depending on your taste. I really do want to discuss it though, if only to sort out some of my lingering confusion, so in my own selfish interests - go, read it!

Or at least, come over here and let's make some kind of TEAM ELIOT fanclub.


NOTE: I would have been happier if I hadn't read the blurb on the back of the book before I read it; the UK edition at least contains a major plot spoiler for Book 1. I understand that once you have read the entire book this doesn't feel like a plot spoiler at all, it's just "what happens in the book" and some people might think I am over reacting but whatever - I personally would have very much preferred the surprise, and to not have read the beginning knowing what was about to happen, so if you are going to read it and can avoid the blurb until you have at least reached Book 2 then I'd suggest you consider keeping at much surprise as possible :)

Comments

[azurelunatic]

ELIOT IS EXCELLENT, YES.

I am coming to this from someone who read, re-read, and then read again through The Magician's Nephew, so I wanted more meta about the Spaces Between.

I was ... kind of unsurprised ... by the Reynard Incident, but also left feeling sort of like "yeah, some gods are like that, and I really don't like those gods."

Comment contains major spoilers

[altogetherisi]

ELIOT LOVE YES! *fistpump*

The Magician's Nephew was definitely the Narnia book I read and obsessed over the most, absolutely, though TMK did rather make me want to crack out The Voyage of the Dawntreader. I thought what we got about the Spaces Between was interesting, but yes, moar would be good.

To me the whole Reynard thing has two parts - the violent deaths, and the rape - and maybe I'm being weird about this whole thing but I felt that the rape was just. IDK. Over the top. Pointless. Unnecessary. And maybe felt a bit like, what's the worst thing that can happen to my female character who I can't kill off? Oh yeah, she can be raped. It felt a bit... tacked on the end. If it was important, it should have been treated as more important, and if it wasn't important it shouldn't have been included IMO. IDK. I am confused. Also I am torn between warning for it and not spoiling for it. Man. So while in-world I am OK with the Reynard stuff happening, as a bad thing that happens when you mess with this kinda shit, and I liked the one plotline causing all the shit in the other plotline thing, I feel out of the book that I would have preferred Grossman to do something else. I wasn't surprised that stuff went very badly wrong. But I was surprised at the rape. IDK. Maybe I shouldn't have been, but I was, so.

What did you think of Quentin and the rest of the book?

Re: Comment contains major spoilers

[azurelunatic]

The Voyage of the Dawntreader I got a few chapters into, and then it made me seasick, so I never did actually finish the series.

Yeah, there are other ways to steal someone's soul than rape them, although it did not actually surprise me when I arrived at that point because of the point where Quentin manages to trigger her, and I'd been reading about the Very Nasty Habits of Greek gods.

I think Quentin is much more adult in general than he was in the last one, and getting generally fucked with is good for him. I don't think his story arc is complete. I was actually sort of expecting him to get banished to the Far Side but that probably would have been cheating.

[arkeiryn.livejournal.com]

Don't most sequels contain plot spoilers for their prequels in the blurb?

[altogetherisi.livejournal.com]

Ha, yes, I should have been clearer - The Magician King, like The Magicians, is divided into parts, which are named Book 1, Book 2 etc. So I didn't mean it has a spoiler for the previous book on the back - though it does - but for the first section of this book, which then meant I found myself reading the beginning of The Magician King waiting for the spoiler/"the real plot" to happen, and I would have preferred it if I hadn't known what was coming. It was a good few chapters in, after all.

[arkeiryn.livejournal.com]

Oh, okay, that makes a lot more sense XD