Book of the Week: The Magician King

Imagine if you suddenly found yourself living in a fictional, Narnia-esque world that you cherished reading about as a young child. 

This idea is just one element of the story that author Lev Grossman creates for his characters in The Magician King. The book serves as a follow-up to Grossman’s previous work, The Magicians (2009), in which he first introduced readers to Quentin Coldwater, a teen who finds himself enrolled in a secret school for magic known as Brakebills College.  

If the premise sounds familiar, then please note that this series is a much grittier and yet humorous take on what would happen if an average teenager were presented with the opportunity to acquire magical powers.  

The Magician King picks up with the aftermath of the first book in which Quentin and his companions unlocked a way to travel between worlds and realities.  Quentin and his friends have settled in as the kings and queens of Fillory, a magical realm that was the setting for a fantasy series that Quentin obsessed over as a young child, but their adventures are far from over. 

Throughout this sequel, Grossman makes numerous fantasy and pop culture-related references through the thoughts and comments of his characters, and the fact that Grossman indicates that all of his characters possess an awareness of the works of C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, and J.K. Rowling makes for some amusing moments as they attempt to reconcile the simplistic nature of the stories that they have read growing up with the complexities of the life that they are living.  

All in all, Grossman does an interesting job of portraying the darker aspects of popular fantasy while still paying tribute to his predecessors in the genre.

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