The Sword and Laser discussion

As I mentioned on another thread I found the character to be insufferable. By the end of the book he had no redeming characteristics for me. He does not seem to grow up at all throughout the book. It is as if he is a sociopath but does not have the talents of manipulation normally associated with this type of character. He is left floundering in his own ineptitude and stubournly refuses to learn anything from his situation.

I do not think he regretted any of his mistakes but puts the blame on everyone else for his perception of theirs.

I think my issue was his lack of evolution as a person. Not so much that he started out immature, self-absorbed, and self-destructive. It was frustrating that he couldn't be happy with anything, also what he did to Alice was the straw breaking the camel's back. I would have liked to see him grow as a person. To me, that's necessary to see in a main character as I read a book.

Q is useless, useless, useless. Correct me if I am wrong, but he does almost nothing while (view spoiler)[ his friends and his love are maimed and killed via self-sacrifice. (hide spoiler)]

What a tool.

The only cool thing about the character is how enamored he was of being a goose.

I'm finding all your responses quite interesting, actually - I found Q a fascinating character precisely because he *wasn't* a hero - because he was weak, a coward, and I found him much more human and real for it. Many, many people don't "grow up" all that much between 17 and 21 - plenty are just as daft when they come out of uni as when they went in. Q's never had to work for anything - money, grades, he had close friends before going to Brakesbills and Alice, whilst not exactly falling into his lap, was not a turbulent relationship. He's never had to hone his character against a challenge, so when presented with the enormity of saving an entire nation, is it really surprising that he crumbled?

His actions in Fillory - I didn't see them as "doing almost nothing" - he did try and got pretty injured for it; how many of us would be able to cope under those circumstances?

I suppose the thing for me is that I really see where he's coming from with the constant low-level unhappiness, so I don't think less of him for it.

Kurt wrote: "My large problem with this Nicole and Veronica, is that while I'm mostly ok with him being an ass to start with he grows very little throughout the book with most of the changes happening at the en..."

Although I fully understand your frustration with the fact that years pass in the book and little changes with his attitude. There is a case that can be made for the possibility of future development in future books. Typically the changes that characters make are much smaller when you are dealing with a series of books. It has been my observation from many serial books that the main character tends to grow very little in the first book because the first book sets the framework for the character. But by the end of the series that same character can be almost unrecognizable.

I appreciate that Quentin isn't a heroic leader, but an obnoxious, self-absorbed, jerkwad most of the time. That's an interesting premise, especially in a world where things should be exciting. My problem is that he's all those things and boring as well. I wanted more about those traits of his, or even to see them taken further. All he does is sulk and pout about life. His surge of self-destruction is wine and cheating on his girlfriend. I'd be more intrigued if he really indulged in risky behavior, the sort he only would have access to because of his magic, and further, that he believed himself invincible to because of magic.

Quentin reminds me of most of the kids I went to high school with. I was surrounded by epic overachievers with high IQs and rich parents who were able to get them into every activity and after-school club. We had two Flynn scholars in my class alone.

In short, they were all entitled and neurotic. I was sold on Q as a character when he paused to consider his options before signing up (magic Harvard made me snort). A privileged kid yanked out of his comfort zone and dropped into a place where he's not number 1, I can see the distress and relate.

He's not super sympathetic, but he is very familiar and it's the realism that's selling me so far.

Well, I had an Audible credit so went on to the Magician King (with some reservation.) Two hours in and Q is actually kind of likable. (Who are you really and what have you done with Q?)

Ala wrote: "Whiny-ass? Or whiniest ass?

Discuss."

Ugh. I really hated him. Truly, truly hated.

While reading the book, I kept hoping he would die so I wouldn't have to put up with him any more. I found him just as insufferable as Thomas Covenant (Stephen R. Donaldson's creation), and thinking he would be the main character in another series made me throw up a little.

I stuck with it and made it through the whole book hoping this would be some kind of coming of age or character-based story where, perhaps through those 4 or 5 years of young adulthood, he would grow or change.

Nope. Didn't happen.

I have to say, I thought he was the absolute worst part of the book.

Doctordalek wrote: "I admire any author who can write an awesome book with characters I hate."

Agreed - well said, Doctordalek!

I love Quentin. He reminds me of a lot of boys I knew in college. I more or less agree with what (view spoiler)[Julia (hide spoiler)] says of him in The Magician King,

She'd always liked Quentin, basically. He was sarcastic and spookily smart and, on some level, basically a kind person who just needed a ton of therapy and maybe some mood altering drugs. Something to selectively inhibit the voracious reuptake of serotonin that was obviously going on inside his skull 24-7.

What I liked most about him was that he didn't have an irritating growing and changing arc. Just like in real life.

Lepton wrote: "Q is useless, useless, useless. Correct me if I am wrong, but he does almost nothing while [spoilers removed]

What a tool.

The only cool thing about the character is how enamored he was of being..."

The part about becoming a goose was one of his better qualities. :)

Sadly, the story probably wouldn't have come together as well if he'd become a goose for the rest of his life.

Kate wrote: "What I liked most about him was that he didn't have an irritating growing and changing arc. Just like in real life."

I have to agree, at about 60% through right now, I'm enjoying the realism in the book. Some people, especially those like Quentin, don't grow. I've got a family friend who could have been the model for Quentin (or the model for Sheldon from Big Bang Theory).

In another thread somebody mentioned references to Harry Potter taking them out of the story. I think it fits in perfectly, it reminds me that this book is happening right now, and that the magic is truly in a world that exists within ours.

Lepton wrote: "Q is useless, useless, useless. Correct me if I am wrong, but he does almost nothing while [spoilers removed]

What a tool."

I think that the main thing that bothered me about Q (aside from being the whiniest ass I've ever read. Seriously, IMHO he's worse than Thomas Covenant) is that he's so far away from being a hero that he's barely the protagonist. I understand that Grossman was out to subvert typical fantasy tropes (not satarize, by the way; the book doesn't fit the definition), but I felt that he took the subversion so far it became a parody of itself.

Kate wrote: "What I liked most about him was that he didn't have an irritating growing and changing arc. Just like in real life."

Except it is unrealistic for him to not go through some kind of maturation and change, given the extraordinary circumstances and opportunities he is presented with. Yes, magic - purpose = ennui, but that latter 20% presents perfectly reasonable room for personal growth. Grossman just doesn't take it because he's too busy not being HP, Narnia, or any other bildungsroman.

I'd say that Harry Potter had already in a very mainstream and public way subverted fantasy tropes. HP may be "heroic", but he is certainly flawed and "non-perfect". HP is at times teased, bullied, heart-broken, poor, clumsy, etc, etc. Not exactly a fantasy hero. And I daresay that Rowling was hardly the first to have given her hero flaws and foibles, etc.

I hardly think fantasy tropes at this point need subverting when the hard fantasy/postmodern fantasy reaction to them has become as trite and cliched as anything else.

Incorporating bad teenage/young adult drama, sex, and cussing into a fantasy-ish story isn't subversive or laudable. It's merely lazy and unimaginative. I have many of the same problems with The Magicians as I did with Ready Player One in that it's really not for adults.

It's hard to call something postmodern or new wave after a couple years...

I get it, Quentin is wanting something to make him happy. I know a lot of people that think that they'll be happy when...(insert random life event). I just didn't need to be beaten over the head repeatedly with this theme.

I kind of felt like this was the whole point of the book. I really enjoyed it overall, for the same reason that you didn't. I enjoyed being pulled along Quentin's journey through so many fantastic circumstances people would have killed for, but until he figures himself out he won't be satisfied.

Kate wrote: "She'd always liked Quentin, basically. He was sarcastic and spookily smart and, on some level, basically a kind person who just needed a ton of therapy and maybe some mood altering drugs. Something to selectively inhibit the voracious reuptake of serotonin that was obviously going on inside his skull 24-7."

I'm laughing my ass off cos that sounds exactly like my husband. :-D Guess I'll have to read the next one now! Not sure SSRIs would work on Quentin, though, his bleak/dark outlook is very much part of his personality and not something that could - or should - be "fixed", it's not as simple as low mood.

I think Quentin is a bit whinier - my OH (and people I know like him) tend to keep it to themselves a lot more. But I took that as part of the writing; people who live very much in their heads may not be such great conversationalists and that wouldn't play well in a novel.

Quentin, and really all the characters except Alice were so unlikeable I almost stopped reading the book about half way through. I persevered though and I did enjoy that last 20% as others have mentioned.

I think my problem is they are too realistic, they are so like late teenage/early twenty somethings. In fact while reading I was actually starting to picture my college boyfriend as Q, so pretentiously similar.

I didn't hate the book but I didn't love it as much as I wanted. I really look for characters to root for to engage me, and they were prevalent in this book.

Tamahome wrote: "It's hard to call something postmodern or new wave after a couple years..."
Not to get too much into definitions but the first major works of postmodern philosophy were published in the late 60s and 70s, postmodern literary being relatively concurrent with that.

When considering that A Game of Thrones, as just one well-known hard fantasy novel, was published in 1996, I think we can say that we are well within a period of challenging and subverting fantasy tropes, such that these "challenges" have taken on their own stereotypes and cliches, the most facile of which are explicit sex, "realistic violence", and the use of modern explicit language.

Another very well-known postmodern fantasy work would be, of course, The Mists of Avalon, which was published in 1983. It's definitely a deconstruction and retelling of the Arthurian legend from a largely female perspective.

So yeah, postmodern fantasy's been here awhile.

I think to consider this book from a postmodern perspective, I'd want something a little bit more than just the refusal to make Quentin likeable. Step one in a postmodern story is going to be to distort/deconstruct/rebuild fantasy archetypes, which I think does happen. But that's just playing a game. What's going to make it interesting is whether or not you have something to say when you put them back together; whether there is some theme and reason to your breakdown.

I'm not feeling that from this book. It's a lot of just...what if living the fantasy dream is still shitty? That's not quite compelling I think, and it's a shame, because the potential is really there.

Going from high school loser to magical hero is in some very interesting ways a power fantasy, and I think there's ample room for a Quentin who is corrupted by his new life—a confrontation with James, or even Julia, could have done it. Quentin always seems vaguely frustrated by the Anglophilia of Brakebills, but it's just a sort of teen too-cool attitude. There's plenty interesting to say about the problems with British affects; if Quentin's alienation touched on those, it'd be a more interesting comment rather than just snark.

A queer narrative on magical schools could also be interesting; this is a book which practically begs it of us by calling non-magic users "straights." And while Eliot is a nice inclusion, the book doesn't do much to challenge the overwhelming heteronormativity of fantasy tropes: the men-are-real-men women-are-real-women that fantasy (and particularly medievalist fantasy) often trucks in.

But it all just comes off as a kind of hipster-supremacy, snarking at old tropes without really saying anything other than "BORRRING" to them. That's why I'm lost here.

I think you have to have Q written that way inorder for the overal critique of the "CS Lewis/JK Rowling" side of the fantasy genre to work through out the novel. And satire/commentary on fantasy tropes is all the rage in current SFF lit. This is same thing that J Abercrombie and GRR Martin do for the epic fantasy genre.

The comparison to HC in Catcher is an apt and insightful one. The POV narrative commentary in Magicians definitely pays homage to Salinger.

I actually think narrative commentary is much more subtle and refined in the second novel. I think the writing craft is better the second time around.

Isn't Quentin really the villain in this story? I mean the Beast is more a force of nature then a true antagonist. More a foreshadowing of Quentin then an obstacle. During the section in the crypt, I kept thinking if this was Raiders of the lost Ark, Quentin would be Belloq, not Indy.

I thought Quentin was completely self-absorbed, which made him realistic for a teen, but also pretty unlikable. But as others have said, that wasn't enough to make me hate the book, so something was working right. I gave it 3 stars, which is better than I gave, say, The Awakened Mage, which also had an unlikable protagonist. (Of course, Quentin didn't annoy me enough to have me muttering back at the audiobook "Shut up, shut up, just SHUT UP you f***ing a**hole!" the way Asher did.)

The problem with Quentin I feel is that he never fits into the wonderfully magical and intrepid world the author spends 400 pages trying to create. The two jarr making the book almost unreadable.
I understand the appeal of an antihero (a rebel, depressed teenager, lost adventurer etc..) but in the genre of fantasy where emotional payoffs (where is it?!?!) and submersion into a new world are so vital, Quentin seems to stick out like a sore thumb. I didn't care what happened to him in the end and instead was much more interested in characters such as Alice and Elliot who I felt we never got to know as much as they deserve.
Quentin is essentially Elizabeth Wurtzel. I don't think that kind of character has any room in fanasy unless the author has a deft hand at writing characters with overwhelming amounts of emotional baggage and are essentially unlikeable. Give me Proazac Nation any day...

Dan wrote: "Don wrote: "at 17, you should be done being a ridiculous teenager. "

I know people in their thirties who aren't finished being ridiculous teenagers yet."

Yeah, I just laughed at that comment! I'm 22, and most people I know only started being whiny teenagers around 17 or 18.

As I've stated all over the place, this is one of my favorite books in the entire world, and it's literally the book that changed my life.

Having said that, most people I know hate it. They hate Quentin and hate the story and hate the theme and think it's pointless and boring and bleak.

The people I know that liked it are the ones that were/are depressed or bipolar or have PTSD, or some huge psychic trauma. Quentin is one of the most deeply realistic depressed characters I have ever read.* He's constantly miserable, regardless of his circumstances. And when he gets what he thought he wanted, he's still deeply miserable, just about something else. His life has no purpose or meaning, and he can't even be bothered to go find one.

*As a side note, the other was Bella from Twilight in book 2, but she's so vapid and boring that I still hate her with a passion.

But I really, really disagree with the people who are saying that Quentin experiences no character development. In the last 50-100 pages, he changes exponentially. And the fact that he was the same for so long, was the thing that lead him to be able to change in such a meaningful way.

When I read the book for the first time, I had to put it down after (view spoiler)[Alice died and everything went to hell (hide spoiler)], and I just cried and cried. I never ever cry during books. And it wasn't because I was sad that (view spoiler)[ Alice was dead (hide spoiler)]. I was too afraid to finish the book. There weren't a lot of pages left, and I didn't possibly understand how Grossman could have finished it with a happy ending.

But it didn't have a happy ending. And that's the part that changed my life. It didn't have a happy ending, because happy endings aren't real. But Quentin continued. He wasn't less depressed, and he was even more miserable and Alice was dead, and he had PTSD. But he continued. Because just moving forward is what mattered. That was the day I decided to stop thinking about killing myself. Because moving forward is all that matters.


I realize this is a pretty dark and pretty personal post. But as I keep on saying, this book changed my life. I don't care if other people don't like it, but I do care enough about it to try to explain why it's so important, so that people don't dismiss it as a shitty book with an unlikeable character.

Alex wrote: "Sure, he's a bit on the depressive side, but my favourite part of the book was how the world was filtered through his skeptic POV."

He isn't actually a skeptic though, and that's the problem. Q is cynical, but only because he's really quite naive, and he's afraid others will find out and mock him. He wants Filory--the fluffy Filory as portrayed in the books--to be real. Hell, that was his first question when he arrived at Brakebills.

If he were a true skeptic, he would have questioned his assumptions about how magic and Filory work.

One of the more insufferable characters I've come across in awhile. On top of all the criticisms levied against him in this thread I just found him boring. I could find an identical version of Quentin in any engineering/cs class in America.

I thought I liked him at the beginning of the book, but it got old pretty quickly. Definitely the sort of person I'd have stopped hanging out with when I was at university. The unrelenting negativity just becomes too much of a drain. Sure, I and many people I know had our moments (and/or still do) complaining and being entitled, but not ALL the time.

I actually saw so much of my younger self in Quentin that it honestly scared me a little. But really, Quentin is representative of the majority of my generation and I didn't mind hos character at all. He didn't seem all that whiny to me - a little bit too entitled for his own good, a little bit arrogant and self-demeaning in equal part - altogether very human.

Quentin was a believable, realistic adolescent to me; his faults made him easy to identify with but also despise a little. We hate in others what we hate in ourselves most, don't we?

P.S. I'm a little bit buzzed atm and writing this on my phone ehile trekking home from a night out, so kindly forgive any spelling mistakes and incoherency.

Chase wrote: "I could find an identical version of Quentin in any engineering/cs class in America."

I'd say he's a lot more like a math or physics major (speaking as a physics major), but I agree...I wonder if the people who think he isn't all that realistic a character are people who studied things that "normal" people study in college/university. I've found most physicists/engineers/mathematicians/etc are a bit...quirky.

I'll admit that I identified with Quentin, he reminded me a lot of how I was at 17, but given that by the end of the book he's meant to be about 5 years older, he doesn't seem to have learned anything or grown any. Seems a tad unrealistic for anyone to not grow or change at all over a 5 year period.

My problem with him was that I didn't connect with him. I found his attitude towards everything to be really quite repulsive, it made me not want to connect with him. I have no problem reading characters that I hate, and in fact I often quite enjoy reading them (Cersei Lannister from George R. R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire series, for example).

I find that I really connected more with the peripheral characters like Alice and Josh, and even Eliot and perhaps I'd have enjoyed the whole thing more from one of their perspectives - particularly Josh or Alice

Just finished the book for the second time (and went straight in The Magician King) and I still don't really get why people dislike Q so much. It's true that he gets what he wants and isn't made happy by it - but that's not through petulance or some moral failing. Also for the last part of the book he's clearly grieving. Whatever 'sins' he committed he more than pays for.

So at worst I feel sorry for him. At best I do rather like him.

Saw this on Brandon Sanderson's blog. Its like Quentin was created by doing the opposite of everything Brandon describes in his lecture. Listen to the end of part 2 for some specifics on what I think went wrong with Quentin.

Part 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=THUaAY...
Part 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oByceU...

Jonathon Dez-la-lour wrote: "I'll admit that I identified with Quentin, he reminded me a lot of how I was at 17, but given that by the end of the book he's meant to be about 5 years older, he doesn't seem to have learned anyth..."

I really like your comments about Quentin. You are very right, 5 years down the road, he is still very lost and a mess. What I'm seeing a lot of in these discussion boards are many very intelligent people, with a decent appetite for reading. Quentin has intelligence, but what does he desire? I can't even really say and I'm in the second book.

I know most people who are fairly intelligent, but without ANYTHING to attend to like a favorite hobby or even the joy of steady reading, they fall into the pessimistic trap of self-loathing and destruction. After college, these things become even harder to do, because there is no one besides yourself inspiring you. I see this in Quentin. No one really talks about these people, because what is there to say? They didn't follow one path or one dream, and they have fallen to the wayside.

I like that Mr. Grossman brings this character to our attention. A change is nice for a month.

I hated the ending. To me it felt so much like Grossman suddenly realized "Oh no, I have 3 pages left and have to set up a sequel."
My alternative ending would be; he steps through the broken window, doesn't get the spell right because his adjustments are all based on Filory, plunges to his death :)

Veronica wrote: "He's essentially the "classic American teenager."

We were all assholes at that age."

Assholes sure -- but that insufferable? I really don't think so.

AndrewP wrote: "I hated the ending. To me it felt so much like Grossman suddenly realized "Oh no, I have 3 pages left and have to set up a sequel."
My alternative ending would be; he steps through the broken wi..."

Any ending where Quenting dies sounds good to me.

It seemed to me like throughout the book Quentin kept looking for some sort of magic cure to be happy...first the existence of magic itself, then the existence of Fillory were supposed to be an elixir for all of his problems (this pattern continues (view spoiler)[ in the Magician King, with his becoming King (hide spoiler)]). The point Grossman seemed to be trying to make was that depression is not a logical or sensible condition, and the elixir to fix it.

This quote really resonated with me (from the second page of the book):

Quentin knew he wasn't happy. Why not? He had painstakingly assembled all the ingredients of happiness. He had performed the necessary rituals, spoken the words, lit the candles, made the sacrifices. But happiness, like a disobedient spirit, refused to come. He couldn't think what else to do.

It's sometimes hard to follow the course of a novel through the eyes of a character who is so deeply pained, but I think it's 100% worth it.

After spending a couple of weeks away from the book and not really thinking about it, I think I seem to have stumbled on a way for me to actually have liked the book and the ending.

From very early on in the book, it's made quite obvious that Quentin has never really gotten over the Fillory and Further books and so desperately just wants something (and somewhere) different to his everyday life.

Adam said over in is "A Change of Perspective" thread that after the transition to Fillory, he started visualising the book in a more animated style. It's something that I noticed too while reading, the book starts out very realitsic and grounded and gets more and more fantastical as the book continues.

It's now sorta dawned on me that perhaps this is a reflection of Quentin's mental state and that as the world around us - as readers - becomes more and more fantastical, it's actually Quentin distancing himself further and further from reality.

After reading the whole book, I very easily came to the decision that I wouldn't be reading The Magician King and so I feel the need to treat this book as a complete entity in and of itself. And in order for me to do that, I think I need to, perhaps, view everything from Quentin's appearance at Brakebills onwards as a constructed reality within Quentin's mind. You know, take it as though this is the world that Quentin is creating in his own mind in order to distance himself because he can't or won't deal with the real world around him.

I know that this changes the entire meaning of the book, but I think that I need to look at it more as an exploration of Quentin's growing mental instability - and if I decided to re-read this in the future with this idea in mind, I would probably find the book completely fascinating.

As a straight read, I still don't like it. But perhaps with my newfound perspective and distance, I might be able to re-read this again in the future and enjoy it.

Margaret wrote: "Quentin is one of the most deeply realistic depressed characters I have ever read.* He's constantly miserable, regardless of his circumstances. And when he gets what he thought he wanted, he's still deeply miserable, just about something else. His life has no purpose or meaning, and he can't even be bothered to go find one."

I agree that this character is incredibly well written IF you are a person who suffers from the same issue. Take away the drugs and this guy is me. I'm 48. I haven't outgrown or risen above the same constant dissatisfaction that plagues Q.

I think the point may be that until you straighten yourself out, even a magical universe won't do much for you? And I can say that this is definitely true in my case.