Sorry. It's not me, it's you...

After some weeks I have finally finished The Magicians and The Magician King. The last half of the second book was a struggle. The Guardian reviewed it  as a Harry Potter for grown-ups. I cannot agree. Without saying too much these novels are a mix up of Narnia, Harry Potter and some religion with associated existential questions, and not in a good way.

Ingredients:

• Very intelligent teenagers
• A magical college
• Another world called Fillory
• 7 keys
• A plot to erase all magic

 

Grossmans characters doesn't convince me that this is a grown-up story. It's not his fault, the characters are after all teenagers but the praising from The Guardian and other reviewers made me disappointed in the end. The story could have been really good but it's like Grossman tries too hard to make something "new" by using every successful part of other stories which makes it all  messy and non-unique. 

The characters are sometimes hard to read, and it's because there's no steady flow in describing them. Sometimes you have a clear picture in your head about the character you're currently reading about and sometimes it is blurry and  I didn't get to know them enough. 

Evil characters is combated, some people die and some people get going. In the second book one character, Julia, gets a lot of pages with her own story. In the end I don't understand why. Of course something special is happening but it doesn't make that much sense. The last half book happened too fast, as if Grossman discovered he didn't have that much space left to tell the story and I was really disappointed by the end.

So...In summary this is a too big story for only two books, with too much happening and all the story feels truncated.


I am not quite satisfied with my first bookreview in a lot of years, but it will be better. I promise ;)