MADreads

For magicians and muggles alike

October 8th, 2009 Kylee

What if Harry Potter hadn’t been a charming British orphan, but a middle class nerd from Brooklyn?  And, instead of attending Hogwarts as an 11-year old, he finished high school as a muggle and didn’t discover his wizardly talents until he was invited to apply to a prestigious magical university?

Lev Grossman’s The Magicians isn’t an imitation Harry Potter, but it definitely borrows some important plot points.  Like Harry, Grossman’s “chosen one”, Quentin, is isolated from his peers as a child and finds a home in the world of magic, but the similarities pretty much end there.  Quentin has a delightfully dry sense of humor, and he doesn’t have Harry’s moral compass clearly leading him down the right path towards the good side.  In Quentin’s world, there’s no Voldemort to fight, so the differences between right and wrong are harder to see.  The fact that Quentin’s magical education takes place at college, rather than high school, also makes them pretty different.  By 17, after dealing with much more than your average teen, Harry is a mature young man, but at the same age, Quentin hasn’t yet begun to grow up.

This is not your typical fantasy novel.  It’s self-aware and sarcastic, playing with the conventions of traditional fantasies while creating a fresh, new world of magic that coexists with our own.  Quentin’s love of a book series set in Fillory, a world reminiscent of Narnia, adds a touch of irony and makes him an even more relatable character.  Fans of exciting, out of the ordinary coming-of-age novels will be just as delighted by this book as fantasy readers, and anyone who read Harry Potter and mourned their muggle status will be insanely jealous of Quentin.

Entry Filed under: Fantasy