The Magician King (The Magicians, #2) in Ultimate Popsugar Reading Challenge

Aug 04, 2011 Lydia Presley rated it it was ok

Shelves: 2011, fiction, fantasy, urban-fantasy

Original review posted here

First, I want to talk about one of my biggest pet peeves. I don’t care if your book is fantasy, urban fantasy, sci-fi or paranormal (or even just regular literature), I don’t like seeing the names of things, popular things or pop-culture, in the text of the book. It makes me feel disjointed and reminds me that I am, indeed, reading a book and still very much living in the real world. When I read, fantasy and science fiction most of all, I read to lose myself in the wor ...more

2 likes · Like · see review

Dec 02, 2011 Heather - hturningpages rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: loved-it, amazing-series, favorites

I love this series so much. The ending still gets me right in the feels!

2 likes · Like · see review

Aug 21, 2011 Arty rated it really liked it

Shelves: 2011-reads

i gave it 4 stars for the back story on Julia, who is a most intriguing character and partly because I loved the first book so much. Quentin really has become a bit of a bore in this book, and I think Julia saved the book. Janet and Eliot were present, but barely there. However, I remain hopeful for what's next and hope the series continues. ...more

1 like · Like · see review

May 10, 2011 Sarah rated it it was amazing

So, I remember liking the first book (The Magicians) but I read it so long ago that the details are hazy. However, a lot of what happened in the first book came back to me when I started reading this one. This book has been described as "an adult Harry Potter" and while I don't totally agree with that, it has a lot of similar elements like magic, spells, adventures and so forth. It actually reminds me a lot more of "The Chronicles of Narnia" in that there's another world with two Queens and two ...more

Like · see review

Aug 04, 2011 martha rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: year-2012, speculative-fiction, kindle

Torn between giving it 3 or 4 stars. A lot of it still irritated the crap out of me, like the first one did, but I also got INCREDIBLY CAUGHT UP in it. One of those 'oh god, I better just read straight through because I'm not going to get anything done until I do'.

It's funny that I hate the execution of these books as much as I do: in theory I love detailed realism in unexpected places (like, I once said that I wish they talked more about selling paper on The Office; I wished Lost would have tal Torn between giving it 3 or 4 stars. A lot of it still irritated the crap out of me, like the first one did, but I also got INCREDIBLY CAUGHT UP in it. One of those 'oh god, I better just read straight through because I'm not going to get anything done until I do'.

It's funny that I hate the execution of these books as much as I do: in theory I love detailed realism in unexpected places (like, I once said that I wish they talked more about selling paper on The Office; I wished Lost would have talked about, like, the need for tampons and vaccinations), but these books are just so snide about something I love with such purity. Like I said in one of my status updates, it's like someone being bitchy and cleverly snarky about my mom, and maybe she's not perfect, but she's MY MOM, shut UP! And the Narnia books were THE sacred books of my childhood. Plus Quentin and a lot of the other characters are just so unsympathetic, and I've never been able to get on board with an unsympathetic character.

That said, what worked so well for me here was Julia's story. It's funny reading other people's reviews and seeing them talk about Julia as an afterthought, since this felt to me like a book about Julia's personal history, with interruptions by Quentin, not the other way around. I loved learning all about the magic underworld, the universe outside Brakebills. Also this time it's ripping off The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, my fav of the Narnia books, so there was some enjoyment there. In general I like Grossman's writing most when he lets himself be purely imaginative -- Eliot's listing of different kinds of islands and adventures at sea, Josh describing the different worlds he could reach through the Neitherlands -- and least when Quentin is rolling up his eyes and making up rude nicknames for ~~Aslan~~ Ember. He also spends a lot of time thinking "man, Julia seems to be in really horrible shape, I should help her out".... and then doing nothing at all about it. I think her assessment at the beginning that he's been horrible to her because she wouldn't sleep with him in high school is basically true.

ALL THAT SAID, I had serious issues with the climax of the book. I'm going to use the spoiler tags here; do NOT read on if you don't want the whole thing spoiled.

(view spoiler)

Other stuff: I really really want to know what happened to Asmodeus. .... if she comes back in the third book, I'm totally going to give in and read it, against my better judgment. I did really love the stuff about finding your own people, your family, in online communities. Which I'm sure surprises no one.

In conclusion: good plot, questionable everything else. Hm. ...more

Like · see review

Jan 01, 2012 Jennifer rated it really liked it

Shelves: fantasy

Oh Quentin. I loved to hate you for most of the Magicians. And then somehow by the end of that book, I was completely hooked. You were flawed, but somehow made me love you. You were an annoying angsty twat, but you were still so real. I know people like you. I'm a bit like you.

And then you came back in the Magician King, and you were there again. All the frustrating parts, and the idioscyncracies, and your complete unwillingness to enjoy what you had in the face of potentials elsewhere. But you ...more

Like · see review

Feb 08, 2017 Hannah added it · review of another edition

Shelves: 2017, fantasy, grownups-fiction

It's amazing that a book that is just about the ennui of an entirely unremarkable, boring, self-centered person can be interesting, but this is, somewhat. It's not anywhere near as engaging as the first one, and I'm on the fence about bothering with the third one, but I did like getting to know Julia better, whose depression is actually interesting (to a point; her story gets real, real weird) versus ennui, which is uninteresting. ...more

Like · see review