Jul 13, 2025
Rating:đź”®
The Magicians Trilogy is a series by Lev Grossman. I read the first book about 5 years ago and (re)read all three books this year. Spoilers ahead!
The story follows Quentin Coldwater and his school friends from their late teens to early thirties. They undergo a magical education and many adventures. The first book covers the entire 5 years of schooling. Quentin starts an insecure and brooding teenager and ends up a man with reasonable flaws and stable self-knowledge.
His lifelong obsession with Fillory, a Narnia-like magical land, leads him to learn that it is actually a real place. He goes there, becomes Fillorian royalty with his friends, saves Fillory and even magic itself. These high-stakes fantastical issues combined with Quentin making relatable own-goal mistakes through his early years and learning and growing through them lead to an engaging series.
These books somewhat answer the question “what if Harry Potter had nuanced, real-world problems instead of Voldemort and his evil henchmen?”. It’s an interesting proposal - what if Lord of the Rings had no orcs, or The Incredibles had no Syndrome? What’s left without pure evil to fight is “wherever you go, there you are” - no matter how much power you gain (in this case, magical ability), you still have to live with yourself and your internal issues.
That being said, there ends up being a number of purely evil enemies, they just exist in Fillory, the magical fairy tale world, rather than Earth, where things are more complicated. The books satirize certain Fantasy tropes while also finding ways to make use of them, since they are usually the things that make Fantasy fun and interesting.
I like how the books subvert certain expectations: if you encounter the type of violence seen in even a minor battle with an enemy for the first time, you’re likely to be devastatingly traumatized for a while. If you live as a magical demon for half a decade, you don’t emerge comfortably back into your human body.
I liked the books, but not as much as a did reading the first one five years ago. The plot lines were a bit circuitous, some main characters felt forced, and some climaxes fell flat. That being said, there was definitely enough to keep me interested throughout, and I’d generally recommend them.