The Magician's Land

A Novel

By: Lev Grossman

Narrated by: Mark Bramhall

Length: 16 hrs and 27 mins

Publisher's Summary

The stunning conclusion to the New York Times best-selling Magicians trilogy.

Quentin Coldwater has been cast out of Fillory, the secret magical land of his childhood dreams. With nothing left to lose he returns to where his story began, the Brakebills Preparatory College of Magic. But he can't hide from his past, and it's not long before it comes looking for him.

Along with Plum, a brilliant young undergraduate with a dark secret of her own, Quentin sets out on a crooked path through a magical demimonde of grey magic and desperate characters. But all roads lead back to Fillory, and his new life takes him to old haunts, like Antarctica and the Netherlands, and buried secrets, and old friends he thought were lost forever. He uncovers the key to a sorcerous masterwork, a spell that could create magical utopia, a new Fillory - but casting it will set in motion a chain of events that will bring Earth and Fillory crashing together. To save them he will have to risk sacrificing everything.

The Magician's Land is an intricate thriller, a fantastical epic and an epic of love and redemption that brings the Magicians trilogy to a magnificent climax, confirming it as one of the great achievements in modern fantasy. It's the story of a boy becoming a man, an apprentice becoming a master, and a broken land finally becoming whole.

©2014 Lev Grossman (P)2014 Penguin Audio

A beautiful ending to a great masterpiece

I have read all three books, and they all enthralled me.
I didn't know what this book would entail, and I was a bit skeptic it would be as good as the other books (moreover, I was very skeptic about the ending being good).

But once I started reading, the magic did come through, I was beautiful to see how mature the characters become.

And the ending... I loved it! it was perfect, unpredictable and magical.
I really hope to keep hearing from Lev G in the future...

Perfect ending to a not so perfect story.

It is not who-at I expected. Finally the who-impy and who-inny Quentin steps up to the plate. Who-ich had me waiting for a long time. We finally see the Who-ite castle counter-part. We see who-en, who-ere and who-enever Alice is and who-at is Quentin's usefullness at who-ile last. If you hate how Stewie says Who-eat Thins this trilogy is 48 hours full of it by the narrator. But after the first 47 hours you get used to it. Just Warning You.

Guess I've outgrown Narnia after all...

Although not usually a fan of the fantasy genre, a large part of the appeal of this trilogy for me has been its inspiration from the Narnia chronicles of C.S.Lewis which captivated me as a child. How would those stories play out if the characters were allowed to mature and develop in the "real world"?

I loved the first book of the trilogy, the second a little less so and the third (this one) not so much. At his best, Lev Grossman recreates in my heart the almost painful yearning I had as a child to enter the fantastical world of of Narnia (Fillory, in Grossman's rendering of that world). Descriptions of the imaginary world and its inhabitants are lush and evocative and sure to appeal to lovers of the genre. For me, however, the mystery of the first novel in the series was missing and I found it increasingly hard to care about what happened to the characters in a world so disconnected from our own.

It makes me a little sad--I wish I could have gotten more into the spirit and summoned back to life the sense of wonder I had as a child. The stories have it right for most of us--once you grow up it is almost impossible to fully return to those lands of your dreams, whether it be Narnia, Fillory or Neverland...

Author seems to have run out of steam

The first book was great. The Syfy show is awesome, but this book seemed a little unresolved. Mark Bramhall nailed the reading, however. Props to him.

Wow. Just wow.

Okay, it took me literal months to finish this book. I just could NOT get into it. I'm still not 100% of what happened in the book I kept spacing out so much. The narrator was amazing, as he has been for all 3 books, but the story was just hard to latch onto for me.

Forward, Backward, Around, and Then... Bullseye!!

For just an hour or so, at the beginning, disappointment started to creep in as I listened. I thought, oh well, you can't crank out a 5 start every single time. But I was wrong. Every word written in the first few chapters of this third book of the series is necessary to set up the story to come. The novel moves back and forth through time and worlds, but does so easily and without reader confusion... even if the chapters don't start with a date, etc. The people and events of the two worlds face each other, interact, and then collide into a great story. There are new characters we knew by name in the first two novels that we get to know in depth. Narration is very good. This series needs to be read in order.

THIS is how to finish a trilogy

I showed up for "The Magician's Land" ready to have my 30-something worldview shaken around once more by the horrifying genius teenagers from the previous novels, only to find them all grown up (at least, those who survived) and behaving much more sensibly, and sensitively, than I expected.

Quentin finally gets some perspective! He has become the likeable adult that often results from a troubled and disaffected youth. It's incredibly refreshing, and so is the first part of the story: Quentin, working as a magical gun-for-hire, gets involved in an ill-advised heist for some shady characters. It's funny, a little sad, and insanely dangerous, and it sucked me into the story at once.

In the end, everything ties back to Brakebills and Fillory - and this is where this book really starts to stand out as something exceptional. Previously, we experienced everything through the lens of the main characters' (often tiresome) teenaged jaded world-weariness. Now, Quentin has had time to reflect on the world, magic, and life in general, and he's more optimistic, thoughtful, and creative.

There are some really beautiful themes woven into this story - about the way people experience stories as children, teenagers, and adults; about growing up, and of course love, redemption, all that stuff. But it's also thrilling and exciting and totally unpredictable. It's huge, I loved it, and I wholeheartedly recommend it!

The tv series is better than the books

I enjoyed the books but I like the SyFy series better. The characters have more personality in the television series and the story has a better plot.

fuck yes (so good I screamed)

Ok I'm not gonna spoil anything but later in the book but not the middle or end when quintin did the thing to the person with the spell opposite I just SCREAMED MY FUCKING ASS OF BECAUSE THE AUTHOR IS SO GOOD AND IF YOU FOR THIS FAR YOU UNDERSTAND HOW EVERYTHING WAS TIED TOGETHER SO WELL AND YOU KNOW THAT ITLL CONTINUE BEING FUCKING FABULOUS PUZZLE SOLVING

A book and not a word out of place.

For all the dreamers looking for never never land or Fillory, here is a tale based on a true story.