Magician's Land (Grossman)

Magician's Land (Magicians Trilogy, 3)
Lev Grossman, 2014
Viking Adult
416 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780670015672


Summary
The stunning conclusion to the New York Times bestselling Magicians trilogy.
 
Quentin Coldwater has been cast out of Fillory, the secret magical land of his childhood dreams. With nothing left to lose he returns to where his story began, the Brakebills Preparatory College of Magic. But he can’t hide from his past, and it’s not long before it comes looking for him.
 
Along with Plum, a brilliant young undergraduate with a dark secret of her own, Quentin sets out on a crooked path through a magical demimonde of gray magic and desperate characters. But all roads lead back to Fillory, and his new life takes him to old haunts, like Antarctica, and to buried secrets and old friends he thought were lost forever. He uncovers the key to a sorcery masterwork, a spell that could create magical utopia, a new Fillory—but casting it will set in motion a chain of events that will bring Earth and Fillory crashing together. To save them he will have to risk sacrificing everything.
 
The Magician’s Land is an intricate thriller, a fantastical epic, and an epic of love and redemption that brings the Magicians trilogy to a magnificent conclusion, confirming it as one of the great achievements in modern fantasy. It’s the story of a boy becoming a man, an apprentice becoming a master, and a broken land finally becoming whole. (From the publisher.)

This is the third in the Magicians Trilogy: the first is The Magicians (2009), followed by The Magician King (2011.)

Author Bio
• Birth—June 26, 1969
• Raised—Concord, Massachusetts, USA
• Education—B.A., Harvard College; Yale University (graduate studies)
• Awards—Alex Award; John W. Campbell Award
• Currently—lives in Brooklyn, New York, New York USA

Lev Grossman is an American novelist and journalist, notably the author of the Magicians Trilogy: The Magicians (2009), The Magician King (2011), The Magician's Land (2014). He is a senior writer and book critic for Time.

Personal life
Grossman is the twin brother of video game designer and novelist Austin Grossman, and brother of sculptor Bathsheba Grossman, and the son of the poet Allen Grossman and the novelist Judith Grossman. He graduated from Harvard in 1991 with a degree in literature. Grossman then attended a Ph.D. program in comparative literature for three years at Yale University, but left before completing his dissertation. He lives in Brooklyn with a daughter named Lily from a previous marriage and his second wife, Sophie Gee, whom he married in early 2010. In 2012, his second child, Benedict, was born.

Journalism
Grossman has written for the New York Times, Wired, Salon.com, Lingua Franca, Entertainment Weekly, Time Out New York, Wall Street Journal, and Village Voice. He has served as a member of the board of directors of the National Book Critics Circle and as the chair of the Fiction Awards Panel.

In writing for Time, he has also covered the consumer electronics industry, reporting on video games, blogs, viral videos and Web comics like Penny Arcade and Achewood. In 2006, he traveled to Japan to cover the unveiling of the Wii console. He has interviewed Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Salman Rushdie, Neil Gaiman, Joan Didion, Jonathan Franzen, J.K. Rowling, and Johnny Cash. He wrote one of the earliest pieces on Stephenie Meyer's Twilight series. Grossman was also the author of the " Person of the Year 2010" feature article on Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg.

Novels
Lev Grossman's first novel, Warp, was published in 1997 after he moved to New York City. Warp is about "the lyrical misadventures of an aimless 20-something in Boston who has trouble distinguishing between reality and Star Trek." His second novel Codex, was published in 2004, became an international bestseller.

In 2009 Grossman published the book that he is most well known for, The Magicians. It became a New York Times bestseller. The Washington Post called it “Exuberant and inventive.... Fresh and compelling...a great fairy tale.” The New York Times said the book "could crudely be labeled a Harry Potter for adults," injecting mature themes into fantasy literature.

The Magicians won the 2010 Alex Award, given to ten adult books that appeal to young adults; the book also and the 2011 John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer.

The book's sequel, The Magician King, came out in 2011 and returns readers to the magical land of Fillory, where Quentin and his friends are now kings and queens. The Chicago Tribune called it "The Catcher in the Rye for devotees of alternative universes" and "a rare, strange and scintillating novel." It was an Editor's Choice pick of the New York Times, which referred to it as a "serious, heartfelt novel [that] turns the machinery of fantasy inside out." The Boston Globe called the it "a rare achievement, a book that simultaneously criticizes and celebrates our deep desire for fantasy."

The final book of the Magician's Trilogy, The Magician's Land, was published in 2014. Kirkus Reviews referred to it as a " brilliant fantasy filled with memorable characters" and called it "endlessly fascinating."

Grossman confirmed that he has sold the rights for a television adaptation of The Magicians but added that he's not certain the source material would be conducive to a film adaptation. (Adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 5/21/14.)

Book Reviews
The Magician’s Land, more than any other book in the trilogy, wrestles with the question of humanity. When Quentin and Plum cast spells to become birds or whales, for instance, they prove just how easily human consciousness mucks up joy and the simple pleasure of existing. And when Alice becomes a niffin, her human impulse for suffering is burned away—but so is her empathy. The same thorny consciousness that can make us miserable also enables us to forgive, to connect, to change.... [S]tories...enable us to celebrate and comprehend the human experience. It’s in stories that we find ourselves. It makes sense, then, that as a boy, Quentin Coldwater read a series of books that led him into a life of magic. He fell in love with those books.
Edan Lapucki - New York Times Book Review


Though the tone is occasionally too ironic, and Quentin’s victories overly easy—such as a reconciliation with a key character from the first novel—this novel serves as an elegantly written third act to Quentin’s bildungsroman.... Fans of the trilogy will be pleased at how neatly it all resolves.
Publishers Weekly


When he's not reviewing books for Time, Grossman writes engrossing fantasy that has won him the 2011 John W. Campbell Memorial Award for Best New Writer from the World Science Fiction Society. Here's the conclusion to a trilogy.
Library Journal


An absolutely brilliant fantasy filled with memorable characters—old and new—and prodigious feats of imagination.... Endlessly fascinating.... Fantasy fans will rejoice at its publication.
Booklist


[A] deeply satisfying finale...[Grossman’s] characters’ magical battles have a bravura all their own.... The essence of being a magician, as Quentin learns to define it, could easily serve as a thumbnail description of Grossman’s art: "the power to enchant the world."
Kirkus Review

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