Fantasy: Contemporary

The Magicians, the novel that preceded this one, was one of my favorite works of fantasy of recent years. Grossman took the sugary soda pop of novels like the Harry Potter or Narnia series, and spiked it with a stiff shot of vodka. Instead of cute, well-mannered kids, the protagonists become a group of brilliant, angsty, self-absorbed young adults, who go to a special school to learn a lot of complicated magic, but don't pick up a whole lot of maturity or direction to go with it. Indeed, there's strangely little for them to DO after graduation, at least not until their poking around with powers above their heads reveals a dangerous world they all thought was fictional.

Had it just been a sardonic send-up of cherished works of children's fiction, I might not have enjoyed it so much, but under the hood, it also felt like a metaphor for the coming of age of the more privileged members of the generation that read all those Harry Potter books. A blurring line between fantasy and reality? Check. Too much power at one's fingertips? Check. Being well-trained to jump through hoops without necessarily being well-prepared to make good decisions? Check. An absent older generation? Check.

However, you can’t make a series out of gifted youth disaffection and parodying CS Lewis, and so The Magician King offers its characters the opportunity to grow up. For Quentin, now one of Fillory’s four rulers, the chance comes after the boredom of an easy life in the royal palace inspires him to set off on a diplomatic mission to the far end of the kingdom. As one might expect, this minor quest unlocks a much bigger one, which drags our mopey hero and various friends back to Earth and to other places, teaching him lessons about heroism, sacrifice, and seeing the potential of others. Those readers who felt there wasn't enough plot in The Magicians might be pleased that there's more structure in this outing, though I thought all the place-hopping got to be a little too on rails. Sure, Quentin makes fewer bad decisions, but more often than not, the right pathway simply lines up in front of him. Go through this door because, well, the talking sloth says so.

Grossman also uses this book to fill in the backstory of Julia, who got rejected by Brakebills in the first book, suffered the kind of emotional breakdown one might expect from a brittle overachiever who doesn't get into Harvard, and then disappeared until the end, at which point we learned that she somehow picked up magic on her own. Here, flashbacks interspersed with the main story reveal exactly how that happened, and introduce us to a gnarlier, off-the-grid alternative magic community. To be honest, I found this tale a bit of a slog, given that Julia's as unlikable as the other characters were in Book One, albeit in a fiercer way. But it's not uninteresting, and expands the world in ways that'll no doubt figure into Book Three. Until now, we’ve only seen the bored, bourgeois side of magic education -- here we get the Fight Club kind.

The story also answers a few other questions, some probably of more interest to readers. We learn more about the forces behind the magical multiverse (old and powerful, of course), meet some new characters, and find out what became of Josh and Penny. And plenty of groundwork is laid for a sequel.

All in all, The Magician King, if not as bracingly original as its predecessor, carries forward its momentum without too many stutters. More than just Harry Potter with f-bombs, it’s “adult” fantasy in the truest sense: the magic isn’t safe, the people best suited to it are flawed, and being a hero can come with steep costs. As before, Grossman continues to balance a dark, smartly sardonic sense of humor with a world whose unreality is genuinely haunting. And as before, it's a rather narrow, self-aware audience that will see much of themselves in his characters, but, if you do, this series might speak to you.

I would certainly recommend the audio version. IMO, Bramhall’s slightly arch but sophisticated reading finds the grain of the story while buffering some of Grossman’s snarkiness.

The Black Company is gritty-as-can-be swords-and-sorcery fantasy, written years before that became a trendy idea. The “Company” of the book is a group of mercenaries that hires on with a powerful sorceress known as The Lady, and does various unpleasant jobs for her high command, a circle of grotesque and generally nasty wizards called The Taken. Imagine if the Lord of the Rings were told from the perspective of a group of Sauron’s hirelings, and you might have a sense of what to expect. Except, here, there isn’t much chivalry from anyone -- the “rebels”, while less defined, aren’t much more savory than the Lady’s minions.

The writing, accordingly, has a bracingly hard-boiled flavor. The story’s narrator is the Black Company’s chief medic and historian, a man named Croaker. He entertains few illusions that his brothers in arms are “nice people”, as they go from territory to territory, pacifying the inhabitants in the traditional manner, but there’s a sort of professional honor code that holds the company of rogues, fallen men, weirdos, and thugs together. They might be fighting for money, but they operate with discipline, take care of their own, and display occasional human decency. In a world where the unimportant often end up dead in piles as the armies sweep through, that’s better than nothing.

Overall, I really enjoyed the Platoon-meets-Lord of the Rings feel. The writing is a little choppy, though, often skipping past major events with a terse summary, or dropping in new characters with minimal introduction. But, the style fits well -- Croaker isn’t a guy who believes in the glory or righteousness of the cause and he’s patched up the wounded so many battles, he has little taste for describing what happens on the field, but, at the same time, he feels that what happens to him and his comrades ought to be recorded. I found the simple immediacy refreshing -- even in a fantasy world, the experience of ground soldiers might be universal, including their distance from the politics of everything. That said, some of the anachronisms got a little annoying: I wouldn’t expect someone in this world to know about biological evolution or use the term “sandbagging”. On the other hand, I suppose the use of spellcasters in the lines would enable soldiers to employ somewhat more “modern” tactics.

Other aspects of the book aren’t as ground-breaking. Once you get past Cook’s different take, the world-building and plot fall into familiar molds. But the action, initially aimless, begins to take on a purpose, and I got caught up in the story around the midpoint of the novel. The climax features an epic siege battle as good (and ghastly) as any in fantasy. I also enjoyed the endless bickering between two rank-and-file wizards, who seem to devote more energy to petty magical squabbles with each other than doing their jobs. I don’t know how well Cook maintains the strengths of his grunt-level perspective in subsequent books, but I’ll have to check out the next one. You can certainly enjoy this entry as a standalone work, if you choose not to go further.

Audiobook notes: I thought the narrator did a competent if uninspiring job. He sounds a little “older” than I would expect Croaker to be, but, then, it’s not clear how many years after the fact he’s supposed to be telling his story.

Shades of Grey takes place in an absurd dystopia that resembles a mix of Brave New World, Kafka, and Monty Python. In the book's reality, it's centuries after some ill-defined cataclysm, and the world is now full of strange things like living roads, man-eating trees, small gravity-defying relics, and wandering balls of electrical energy. More significantly, humans are now divided by their ability to see different parts of the color spectrum, and some colors have interesting physiological effects when looked at.

The characters of the novel live in a dysfunctional collectivist society that assigns social standing by color, has a less-than-awe-inspiring Big Brother figure, and is bound by all sorts of ridiculous, Kafka-esque rules -- e.g. cars aren't allowed, except for Model Ts; everyone must pretend that certain people don't exist; and manufacture of spoons is forbidden (turning them into a valuable “beige market” good). The protagonist, Eddie Russet, is a guileless young man determined to be a good citizen and secure himself a socially advantageous marriage to a certain tiresome young lady. At least, he is until he meets an low-caste young "grey" named Jane, whose brand of civil disobedience might be better called just "disobedience".

Fforde's sensibilities are an interesting mix of laugh-out-loud-funny and a bit dark. There's a lot of subversive fun mixing the social rigidity of its characters with their self-serving schemes to exploit loopholes in the rules and/or manipulate others, but there's also a discomfiting bite in the obliviousness with which most of them accept (or even embrace) their society's injustice and warped logic. Humorous or grim, though, I enjoyed Fforde's inventiveness and the process of discovering how everything in the world fit together, which held a few hints at the larger history. From time to time, we get Canticle for Leibowitz-esque references to things left behind after the collapse of our own world, interpreted in a way that's half loopy, half insightful.

That said, the overall story, themes, and writing aren't quite as original as the setting. Towards the end, things start to fall into molds that'll be familiar to readers of more traditional escapist fiction, which leaves some of the initial potential for satire and mind-bending on the table. Still, I liked the creativity quite a lot, and who knows what Fforde might do with the forthcoming sequel.

It's my firm opinion that you have to pick up the audiobook to really get the full effect of the cheeky British humor. The untroubled tone the narrator gives to Eddie (speaking as he is from inside a carnivorous tree) is an amusing fit, as are the voices of several other characters.