
The Magicians
A Novel
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Narrated by:
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Mark Bramhall
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By:
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Lev Grossman
About this listen
Quentin Coldwater is brilliant but miserable. A senior in high school, he's still secretly preoccupied with a series of fantasy novels he read as a child, set in a magical land called Fillory. Imagine his surprise when he finds himself unexpectedly admitted to a very secret, very exclusive college of magic in upstate New York, where he receives a thorough and rigorous education in the craft of modern sorcery.
He also discovers all the other things people learn in college: friendship, love, sex, booze, and boredom. Something is missing, though. Magic doesn't bring Quentin the happiness and adventure he dreamed it would. After graduation, he and his friends make a stunning discovery: Fillory is real. But the land of Quentin's fantasies turns out to be much darker and more dangerous than he could have imagined. His childhood dream becomes a nightmare with a shocking truth at its heart.
At once psychologically piercing and magnificently absorbing, The Magicians boldly moves into uncharted literary territory, imagining magic as practiced by real people, with their capricious desires and volatile emotions. Lev Grossman creates an utterly original world in which good and evil aren't black and white, love and sex aren't simple or innocent, and power comes at a terrible price.
©2009 Lev Grossman (P)2009 PenguinListeners also enjoyed...
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Editorial reviews
Intellectually gifted but emotionally unfulfilled, Quentin Coldwater is as much at sea as any high school senior. He still takes refuge in the fantasy novel series he read as a kid, waiting for happiness to fall in his lap. Surprisingly, it does indeed seem to when an elite and secret college of magic recruits him. Mark Brahmall wonderfully inflects the gaggle of fallible little geniuses Quentin grows up with there: Elliott the flaming drunkard, Janet the flashy attention hog, Alice the wallflower, Josh the bumbling frat boy, and Penny the punk rocker. This is not the nice and polite world of Hogwarts. These 17-year-olds spend five years drinking, screwing, cursing, and occasionally buckling down to work with spells that sound more like chemistry labs than fantastic miracles.
Magic is hard, and growing up proves even harder. Brahmall ages this group of would-be adventurers, gradually inserting the pessimistic uncertainty that creeps in as their graduation approaches, and then the slovenly vulgarity that accompanies their post-grad malaise in New York. But their voices find fresh purpose and energy when Penny discovers that Fillory, the magical land of those books from their youth, is real. Fraught with the tensions sprouting between them, each member of Quentin's posse has reasons to escape into Fillory. Brahmall gives voice to everything from a birch tree to an ancient ram, as the group's quest for a brighter future turns ever more ugly and alarming. Quentin's once idyllic dream now corrupted, he struggles to regain a sense of self and return to the more banal hostilities of the real world.
This is a story narrated with all the wonderment and gravitas inherent in the great tradition of magical coming-of-age tales, to be sure, but it rests firmly on the rocky foundations of a realistic human volatility and longing that may want to keep the characters snatching defeat from the jaws of victory to their bitter end. This world is nothing like Narnia or Middle Earth, and listeners with knowledge of those places will find plenty of insider references here to keep them laughing through the disasters. Grossman has captured a shamefully universal set of psychological quandaries, and Brahmall has expressed them in tones that are terrifyingly recognizable. Megan Volpert
Critic reviews
"Provocative, unput-downable....one of the best fantasies I've read in ages." ( Fantasy & Science Fiction)
" The Magicians is to Harry Potter as a shot of Irish whiskey is to a glass of weak tea." (George R.R. Martin)
Featured Article: The top 100 fantasy listens of all time
When compiling our list of the best fantasy listening out there, we immediately came up against the age-old question: Is this fantasy or science fiction? The distinction is not as clear as you may think. Dragons, elves, and wizards are definitely fantasy, but what about wizards that also fly space ships? (Looking at you, Star Wars.) For the sake of fantasy purity, the top 100 fantasy listens include the best audio works in all manner of fantasy subgenres.
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Warp
- By: Lev Grossman
- Narrated by: Kirby Heyborne, Lev Grossman
- Length: 5 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
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Twentysomething Hollis Kessler languishes in a hopelessly magician-less world (with the exception of a fleet-footed nymph named Xanthe) not too far from where he graduated college. His friends do, too. They sleep late, read too much, drink too much, talk too much, and work and earn and do way too little. But Hollis does have an obsession: There's another world going on in his head, a world of excitement and danger and starships and romance, and it's telling him that it's time to stop dreaming and get serious.
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Don't waste your money!
- By Scott on 09-26-16
By: Lev Grossman
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Vita Nostra
- A Novel
- By: Sergey Dyachenko, Marina Dyachenko, Julia Meitov Hersey - translator
- Narrated by: Jessica Ball
- Length: 18 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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Sasha Samokhina meets the mysterious Farit Kozhennikov under the most peculiar circumstances. The teenage girl is powerless to refuse when this strange and unusual man with an air of the sinister directs her to perform a task with potentially scandalous consequences. He rewards her effort with a strange golden coin. As the days progress, Sasha carries out other acts for which she receives more coins from Kozhennikov. As summer ends, her domineering mentor directs her to move to a remote village and use her gold to enter the Institute of Special Technologies.
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Dark but beautiful
- By J. OBrennan on 11-19-18
By: Sergey Dyachenko, and others
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The Golem and the Jinni
- A Novel
- By: Helene Wecker
- Narrated by: George Guidall
- Length: 19 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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Helene Wecker's dazzling debut novel tells the story of two supernatural creatures who appear mysteriously in 1899 New York. Chava is a golem, a creature made of clay, brought to life by a strange man who dabbles in dark Kabbalistic magic. When her master dies at sea on the voyage from Poland, she is unmoored and adrift as the ship arrives in New York Harbor. Ahmad is a jinni, a being of fire, born in the ancient Syrian Desert. Trapped in an old copper flask by a Bedouin wizard centuries ago, he is released accidentally by a tinsmith in a Lower Manhattan shop.
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Enchanting Debut Novel - Delicious!
- By Tango on 04-26-13
By: Helene Wecker
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A Deadly Education
- A Novel (The Scholomance, Book 1)
- By: Naomi Novik
- Narrated by: Anisha Dadia
- Length: 10 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
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I decided that Orion Lake needed to die after the second time he saved my life. Everyone loves Orion Lake. Everyone else, that is. Far as I’m concerned, he can keep his flashy combat magic to himself. I’m not joining his pack of adoring fans. I don’t need help surviving the Scholomance, even if they do. Forget the hordes of monsters and cursed artifacts; I’m probably the most dangerous thing in the place. Just give me a chance and I’ll level mountains and kill untold millions, making myself the dark queen of the world.
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Intersting concept, way too much self pity
- By Rune on 10-13-20
By: Naomi Novik
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Legends and Librarians
- Legends and Librarians, Book 1
- By: Pandora Pierce
- Narrated by: Jess Moran, Kieran Regan
- Length: 8 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
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At the Misty Mountain Library, stories don't just sit on shelves—they leap right off the page. When Nyssa returns to the magical library she adored as a child, it's not quite how she remembered it. A wild magic storm has brought the books to life, leaving her to repair the library while wrangling tiny dragons, even tinier knights, a grumpy demon lord, and so much more.
By: Pandora Pierce
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Sabriel
- By: Garth Nix
- Narrated by: Tim Curry
- Length: 10 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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Ever since she was a tiny child, Sabriel has lived outside the walls of the Old Kingdom, away from the random power of Free Magic, and away from the Dead who won't stay dead. But now her father, the Mage Abhorsen, is missing, and to find him Sabriel must cross back into that world.
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Enraptured
- By T. HICKS on 06-20-09
By: Garth Nix
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The Map of Tiny Perfect Things
- By: Lev Grossman
- Narrated by: Michael Crouch
- Length: 1 hr and 49 mins
- Unabridged
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Mark is 17 years old and trapped in a time loop, and that’s just fine with him. It’s summertime and he’s spending this one infinitely repeating day reading his way through the town library. Then he discovers someone else in the loop with him: the brilliant, haunted Margaret. Together Mark and Margaret set out to find every wonderful, amazing, perfect thing that happens in that one day - a journey that will take them to the dark secret that waits at the very heart of their endless day.
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A Wonderful Short Suprise
- By Kindle Customer on 02-10-21
By: Lev Grossman
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The Last Magician
- By: Lisa Maxwell
- Narrated by: Candace Thaxton
- Length: 16 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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In modern-day New York, magic is all but extinct. The remaining few who have an affinity for magic - the Mageus - live in the shadows, hiding who they are. Any Mageus who enters Manhattan becomes trapped by the Brink, a dark energy barrier that confines them to the island. Crossing it means losing their power - and often their lives. Esta is a talented thief, and she's been raised to steal magical artifacts from the sinister Order that created the Brink.
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Couldn't Finish
- By Anne on 08-06-17
By: Lisa Maxwell
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The Magician
- A Novel
- By: Colm Toibin
- Narrated by: Gunnar Cauthery
- Length: 16 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
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The Magician opens in a provincial German city at the turn of the 20th century, where the boy, Thomas Mann, grows up with a conservative father, bound by propriety, and a Brazilian mother, alluring and unpredictable. Young Mann hides his artistic aspirations from his father and his homosexual desires from everyone. He is infatuated with one of the richest, most cultured Jewish families in Munich, and marries the daughter Katia. They have six children. On a holiday in Italy, he longs for a boy he sees on a beach and writes the story Death in Venice.
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Terrific listening experience
- By M. Mead on 09-17-21
By: Colm Toibin
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The Night Circus
- A Novel
- By: Erin Morgenstern
- Narrated by: Jim Dale
- Length: 13 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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The circus arrives without warning. No announcements precede it. It is simply there, when yesterday it was not. Within the black-and-white striped canvas tents is an utterly unique experience full of breathtaking amazements. It is called Le Cirque des Rêves, and it is only open at night. But behind the scenes, a fierce competition is underway - a duel between two young magicians, Celia and Marco, who have been trained since childhood expressly for this purpose by their mercurial instructors.
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Dreamlike Experience to Savor
- By Suzn F on 09-18-11
By: Erin Morgenstern
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The Book of Love
- A Novel
- By: Kelly Link
- Narrated by: January LaVoy
- Length: 23 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
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In the acclaimed first novel from short story virtuoso and Pulitzer Prize finalist Kelly Link, three teenagers become pawns in a supernatural power struggle.
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Great book.
- By T on 04-06-25
By: Kelly Link
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Perfect Shadow
- A Night Angel Novella
- By: Brent Weeks
- Narrated by: James Langton
- Length: 2 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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For the first time as an Orbit special edition, Brent Weeks's blockbuster novella Perfect Shadow tells the origin story of the Night Angel trilogy's most enigmatic character: Durzo Blint. Gaelan Starfire is a farmer, happy to be a husband and a father; a careful, quiet, simple man. He's also an immortal, peerless in the arts of war. Over the centuries, he's worn many faces to hide his gift, but he is a man ill-fit for obscurity, and all too often he's become a hero, his very names passing into legend.
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Good writer bad bad bad narrater
- By Kenneth Atkinson on 07-12-11
By: Brent Weeks
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Babel
- Or the Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators' Revolution
- By: R. F. Kuang
- Narrated by: Chris Lew Kum Hoi, Billie Fulford-Brown
- Length: 21 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
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1828. Robin Swift, orphaned by cholera in Canton, is brought to London by the mysterious Professor Lovell. There, he trains for years in Latin, Ancient Greek, and Chinese, all in preparation for the day he’ll enroll in Oxford University’s prestigious Royal Institute of Translation—also known as Babel. Babel is the world's center for translation and, more importantly, magic. Silver working—the art of manifesting the meaning lost in translation using enchanted silver bars—has made the British unparalleled in power, as its knowledge serves the Empire’s quest for colonization.
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The novel language lovers have been waiting for
- By LisaLee on 09-06-22
By: R. F. Kuang
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The Magician's Guild
- The Black Magician Trilogy: Book One
- By: Trudi Canavan
- Narrated by: Richard Aspel
- Length: 15 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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Sonea is caught up in a confrontation between the hated Guild magicians and the angry youth of the slums. To her dismay, she discovers that she possesses the same powers as the reviled magicians. To avoid capture, she must seek protection from the city's feared underworld, The Thieves. In return, she must use her powers for them, but her magic never seems to do quite what she intends it to.
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The book is like a wooden roller coaster...
- By Just Some Fool on 03-01-10
By: Trudi Canavan
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Demon in the Wood
- A Shadow and Bone Graphic Novel
- By: Leigh Bardugo
- Narrated by: Ben Barnes, Benjamin Valic, Cassandra Morris, and others
- Length: 1 hr and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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Before he led Ravka’s Second Army, before he created the Fold, and long before he became the Darkling, he was just a lonely boy burdened by an extraordinary power. Eryk and his mother, Lena, have spent their lives on the run. But they will never find a safe haven. They are not only Grisha—they are the deadliest and rarest of their kind.
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Too short
- By Julie D on 12-12-22
By: Leigh Bardugo
The Magicians is in the best way I can describe a book that understands what it is straight from the beginning. Though not a happy uplifting book, its a great view of how magic would be used in the real world.
The only way I can tell someone if they would like this book or not is if they understand this is about a group of unhappy smart people who discover they can use magic and that the main character is someone who is self destructive and would do anything in his search for happiness.
The Magicians is Beautiful, not flawless. It's not for everyone and it won't be a story that I would recommend to most people, but to those who are looking for a great story and aren't afraid of imperfect characters and concepts that aren't completely original then The Magicians is territory that must be explored.
Not your ordinary book
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Disappointing
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Secondly, you'll see a lot of people disparaging this book and it seems to me that nearly all of them came in expecting something specific, my advice is not to do that. This isn't Robert Jordan, or Raymond E Feist, Tolkien or even CS Lewis. Grossman takes elements from the real world and blends them into aspects from fantasy you're already familiar with. People go on about the characters being unlikable, and it bothers me that they don't seem to understand that there is serious realism in that. Most people are NOT likeable in their late teens and early twenties with such an overhead view of them. But this series is about their growth, Quentin begins his magical studies as a mediocre magician, and he ends it three books later still far from the best, but he is leagues beyond where he started. You meet him and his friends at a very selfish point in their lives where they can barely see past themselves, as is true for most people, but you'll say goodbye to a man that fully understands his place in life and appreciates the people he has above all else with hints of melancholy but not regret towards the things he's sacrificed to keep them safe. He'll become someone worthy of your attention and you'll feel all the more invested having remembered where he started.
As I've said this is a book about people not magic, though you'll find ample amounts of the latter in it. One caveat is that I didn't listen to these novels until after is watched all four seasons of The Magicians on Syfy. The show gave me a much deeper understanding of these characters and also allowed me to envision their faces and mannerisms as I listened. And for anyone that thinks the show has better more likeable characters you should probably go back and rewatch the series, they aren't much different in their motivations from the books if at all.
Not high fantasy, and that's what makes it so good
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The story meanders all over the place in a remarkable setting where very little remarkable happens. The main character is a boring whiney drama queen that ends up doing nothing heroic. I know that having a main character that's actually heroic is a bit of a trope, but without it you end up with a character that's difficult to root for. Here's hoping that he'll actually end up doing something interesting in the next book. I never thought that I was an optimist, but I guess I must be.
The setting is far more interesting than the characters, and therefore the story doesn't quite live up to its potential. I gave this book 3 stars because it's an unremarkable score for an unremarkable story.
The Book That Never Ends
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The narrator is wonderful however, with the exception of how he pronounces "sloth" like "sloath", otherwise he is really great.
I felt like this one was a slog
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Loved it
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This book is 17 hours long, and because of that, there are large portions of the reading where you want to skip ahead and say "get to the point."
The book altogether is alright, however I don't know that I would recommend it to someone that has a passion for the Harry Potter and Narnia universes.
Narration was decent
-T
A big risk...
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Lame story
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interesting...
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TV show is much better
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