Magicians - Softcover

Lev Grossman

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0099534444 ISBN 13: 9780099534440

Publisher: Arrow Books, 2009

Synopsis

In a secret world of forbidden knowledge, power comes at a terrible price...Quentin Coldwater's life is changed forever by an apparently chance encounter: when he turns up for his entrance interview to Princeton he finds his interviewer dead - but a strange envelope bearing Quentin's name leads him down a very different path to any he'd ever imagined. The envelope, and the mysterious manuscript it contains, leads to a secret world of obsession and privilege, a world of freedom and power and, for a while, it's a world that seems to answer all Quentin's desires. But the idyll cannot last - and when it's finally shattered, Quentin is drawn into something darker and far more dangerous than anything he could ever have expected...

About this title

Review

Amazon Best of the Month, August 2009: Mixing the magic of beloved children's fantasy classics (from Narnia and Oz to Harry Potter and Earthsea) with the sex, excess, angst, and anticlimax of life in college and beyond, Lev Grossman's Magicians reimagines modern-day fantasy for grownups. Quentin Coldwater lives in a state of perpetual melancholy, privately obsessed with his childhood books about the enchanted land of Fillory. When he’s admitted to the surreptitious Brakebills Academy for an education in magic, Quentin finds mastering spells is tedious (and love is even more fraught). He also discovers his power has thrilling potential--though it's unclear what he should do with it once he's moved with his new magician cohorts to New York City. Then they discover the magical land of Fillory is real and launch an expedition to use their powers to set things right in the kingdom--which, naturally, turns out to be a much murkier proposition than expected. The Magicians breathes life into a cast of characters you want to know--if the people you want to know are charismatic, brilliant, complex, flawed magicians--and does what Quentin claims books never really manage to do: "get you out, really out, of where you were and into somewhere better. " Or if not better, at least a heck of a lot more interesting. --Mari Malcolm

About the Author

Lev Grossman is a novelist and Time magazine's book critic. A graduate of Harvard and Yale, he has written articles for the New York Times, Salon, Entertainment Weekly, Time Out New York and the Village Voice. In 2005 his debut novel Codex was published to great critical acclaim. He is also the author of The Magicians, The Magician King and The Magician's Land. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.

Edition details

• Publisher: Arrow Books
• Publication date: 2009
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0099534444
• ISBN 13: 9780099534440
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 496