Book Review #1 The Magician Trilogy by Lev Grossman

   
     So I am starting off with a review of The Magician Trilogy by Lev Grossman. I am going to group the three books in one review. This will be my first review because it was the books that I have last read. This series consists of 3 books obviously, the first book is "The Magicians" the second book is "The Magician King" and the last book is "The Magician's Land." In general I am a fan of the fantasy and dystopian genres. I have been since first reading the Harry Potter series. I love how fantasy has the ability to stretch your imagination to its boundary lines, imagining the impossible. I love the dark side of dystopian novels imagining a different society with a different set of rules. With fantasy novels and dystopian it allows you to imagine the "what if's?" It also answers all the "what if" questions.
    So what if humans had the ability to perform magic? What would happen? How would magic change you and/or society? These are some of the "what ifs" that The Magician Trilogy tries to answer and address. There are many others. The Magician trilogy tells a story of a man who's love for a children's book allows him to be invited to learn how to perform magic and tells his story of his experience with magic. Yes this book has been compared to Harry Potter series in effect "being the adult Harry Potter." For me nothing compares to Harry Potter and when you bring up the Harry Potter series in describing another book, you are going to go into reading that book with high expectations. Yes there were some basic similarities and yes this book is more suitable to adults, so yes it makes sense to say this.
   This trilogy addresses many questions such as Should human beings have the power to do magic? What happens when dark magic is used? Who does magic belong to? Who created it and how? Was it God or Gods? It is also a story of one growing older from an immature adolescent to a more mature adult. It asks the questions I am sure most of us have asked ourselves such as What am I going to do with my life? This isn't what I expected, it isn't enough, what is going to make me happy? Why doesn't my life come with instructions on where to go from here?
     So did I like it or not? I would have rated the series as a whole 3.5 stars out of 5. This series had promise. I loved how philosophical this book was. How it raised questions in my mind and provided a perspective of one way to answer the questions that the books arose.  I did like how in a way it was a story within a story. I loved how parts of the trilogy took place in magical lands. The descriptions of the magical lands of Fillory and others were amazing. I loved traveling there in my imagination. It was pretty cool the magic that could be done. How nice would it be to clean up my house with a twist of my fingers. Fillory was a magical land that you would imagine Captain hook in, or King Arthur a Camelot of sorts. The Chronicles of Narnia would have fit in good with Fillory. Fillory had the classic and basic elements of a fantasy world, castles, knights, sword fighting, talking animals, dragons, kings and queens, boats, seas, and islands, keys, unicorns, giants, towers, a wardrobe that was a grandfather's clock. At first glance without reading this book you would say "a typical fantasy world" not much different from others, and it might be a let down. This was a risk that the author took but however, it worked, it took all the best elements of classic fairytales, popular children's books it put them all together and the author created something special in its own way. It made you nostalgic. Fillory first appeared to make you miss the old days when everything was simple and the good guys always win, that was how it first appeared. However as the trilogy took you deeper into Fillory you realized what you first saw was an illusion, that things are not always as they seem, things were different then what you expected. Don't you hate that. But Fillory is what you make of it just as your life and who you are is what you make of the life you are given. This trilogy brought up many emotions, nostalgia, surprise, wonder, frustration, confusion, joy, sadness and fear. These are the things I liked and what kept me reading, I am sure I am forgetting some. Oh well.
     What didn't I like about the book? Well for starters the main character who also narrated the book was somewhat unlikable. He was arrogant and cocky, which made him irritate and annoy you. There were some life lessons that he was forced to learn throughout the trilogy, which made him seem somewhat more likable, an equalizing factory that kept you reading. Actually this next statement is part of why I liked the books. There were times when the plot wasn't making sense like it was confusing in a way. At that present moment I was getting frustrated and annoyed. But as you kept on reading, what you just read made perfect sense, and that alone made it all worth it, I loved how Lev Grossman put this element into his trilogy. However this trilogy took on too many paths, it tried and failed to answer too many questions.  So basically the plot took up more than it could handle. There were some characters who I was not completely understanding their part in the story, or why it was necessary to write that character in. The trilogy took too many road trips went in too many directions. There were twists and turns in the book. Elements that I was not expecting, and I love when this happens in books. Too much predictability can be bad. It adds the element of surprise, getting something you didn't expect. Except in this trilogy there were times where those twists and turns, some of them hit me the wrong way. Hard to explain, like the plot just veered off course and brought me to a place that I didn't belong, and I just didn't understand of why I was there. Overall I think the main thing about this trilogy that I didn't like was that this series had so much potential, it could have been so much better than it was (I am not necessarily saying it was bad). It could have been the next Harry Potter for adults, and it wasn't so I left the trilogy a little disappointed.
     Was it worth reading? Yes for the reasons why I liked the trilogy, there were factors that were excellent in the series, I did learn and get stuff out of reading this book. Should you read this series? I don't know that is for you to decide.  If you are interested in reading this series click the link to buy it. http://www.amazon.com/Magicians-Trilogy-Box-Set/dp/0147517389/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1447973960&sr=1-1&keywords=the+magician+trilogy

Keep turning the pages,
Jill

P.S. Tune in for my next review again of a fantasy series I just started the last book "Winter" of the Lunar Chronicles. Don't worry I am going to read a different genre after that I tend to read in chunks of the books that I have access to.  I am planning on writing another review before Turkey Day on a book that I have read previously. The Winter review will be out after Turkey Day.