Magician's Land (Grossman)

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