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Monday, December 12, 2011

Book Review: The Magicians- Lev Grossman

So Lev Grossman's The Magicians has been lauded as an adult Harry Potter and the newest in the series is on bestseller lists and all that but I honestly don't know why. The story is about Quentin who is a depressed but very smart moron who finds out his dreams of a magic are real but that doesn't make him happy and makes him more of a jerk, and then not only is magic real but the alternate world described in his favourite childhood story books is also real and lo he's still a sad jackass. I think this is supposed to convey some message that if you don't love yourself it doesn't matter what events occur, you still won't be happy. But it largely failed. The book had pacing issues as 5 years of school take up the first half of this book. The problem with this pace is that there is zero character development- ZERO, and that is for all the characters. I think Grossman needs the essential writer's lesson in "Show, don't tell" because he just told us everything and that made all descriptions seem one-dimensional.
2/5 I will not be reading the sequels.

1 comment:

  1. This hasn't got anything to do with the entry in particular, but I've just read this whole blog + the one you had previously, and wanted to commend you on it. You don't just dream of doing things, you actively work towards them and achieve them (from what I've read). It's really inspiring, and I hope to follow many more posts by you in the future!

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