The final two series reviews get a bit heavier. This penultimate series is the last fantasy series I'll try to sell you on. It sounds like Harry Potter but actually is incredibly far from it. I'm pretty sure some of the more dissatisfied responses to this book are from people expecting to find the next Hogwarts and instead getting highly flawed, modern literary characters.
The concept is that Quentin Coldwater is a student ready to leave the world of high school and enter college. He has a friend who's dating his crush and they are essentially a trio. But they vanish early on in the story when Quentin gets tested and accepted to Brakebills, a magical college.
In fact, that set of establishing a trope and then tearing it away to see how the characters react is the running theme of the first novel. Quentin is part of a tight knit trio, then they are gone and he must cope. Quentin is expecting his college days to me like Hogwarts but instead it's actually an incredibly dense and difficult curriculum and he's no longer acing tests effortlessly. And each time this reveal and revoke is called upon it makes the characters involved much deeper. Or at least makes them confront their flaws. Like real people, some of the students at Brakebills aren't necessarily looking to constantly be introspective and better themselves. Some want to get laid. Some want to just get by. Some want to put on airs and affectations in order to hide their insecurities.
I won't give away too much of the plot but I will say this. Do not go in expecting Harry Potter. Instead, realize that Quentin loves magic because of a series of books about a magical place called Fillory. It's a very thinly veiled substitute for the Narnia books, right down to the heavy handed Christian allegories. And it is this series that plants the seeds of what magic and wonder should be for Quentin and therefore influence The Magicians. These books have adventure but it is almost despite the characters, not because of them. While adventures seem like a great idea on paper most people wouldn't want to throw themselves out of their comfort zones and place their lives in jeopardy just as they're discovering magic and, by way of it, a life of unimaginable luxury and metaphysical academia. The conflict in these books, like most things, is a reveal and revoke. You see an adventure coming and then it's here. But it's the internal clash that everyone has to face because these adventures where the real story resides.
Another way to put this book in context. When I reread it this book was perhaps one of 4 novels I had reread in my adult life. This first book in this series is what set me evangelizing books again.
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