The Magician King Review

This week's novel is The Magician King, the sequel to The Magicians by Lev Grossman.  Maybe I should have stuck with The Magicians.

Quentin, now a king of Fillory just like he's always dreamed of, is bored with having everything he's always dreamed of and is itching for a quest.  He sets sail to find the golden keys and save all magic, but it still doesn't satisfy his need for adventure.  Meanwhile, we learn about Julia's struggles after she was denied entrance at Breakbills.  Her life falls apart under her obsession with magic until she finds an underground magical society.

I have two issues with this book, and when they're juxtaposed, they make each other worse.

First is the story's portrayal of women.  This didn't bother me in the first book, because it was all from Quentin's point of view and therefore Quentin was sexist rather than the narrative or the author being sexist.  In this book, the perspectives are split between Quentin in the present, and Julia in the past.  Also, in the first book, the three female characters fit into the tropes of "demure and will sleep with Quentin," "screechy and will sleep with Quentin," and "aloof and won't sleep with Quentin,"  but it wasn't obvious that those were the only categories of female characters we were going to get.  When new female characters in this book started slotting into those roles, and when the "will/won't sleep with Quentin" issue became a bigger, more direct focus, this became more obvious.

I was nearing the end of the novel, thinking about how I would have to write the previous paragraph of this blog post when WHAM!  Sexual assault!  Until that point the violence and sex had been pretty tame, especially in comparison to the first book.  This was out of nowhere.  It was graphic.

"But Julia can't be a strong character unless she has overcome sexual assault!  It makes her stronger!  Right?  Right?"  Ugg.  This is such a dude-bro trope and I hate it hate it hate it.

And this horror show happens right along side my second complaint: that Quentin's journey, his problem that he needs to overcome is his perpetual angsting that his quest isn't questy enough.  His life is so hard. 

In a way I can see it, because as a reader his quest doesn't do it for me.  It's random and anticlimactic.  The search for the golden keys is more along the lines of wandering around until they stumble on them through luck or fate or what have you.  The stakes--that magic will disappear from the multiverse--never feel dire or urgent, and the exciting part of the endeavor to save magic happens elsewhere.  In fact, finding most of the keys happens off screen.  And in the end, when Quinten uses the keys to unlock the door, he has to ask if it worked because he can't tell, and an omnipotent side character has to tell him yes, it worked.

Was that a spoiler?  I don't care.

It's purposefully reminiscent of The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, but the whimsy of the Narnia books preserved in Fillory and the structure of the quest doesn't work with the tone of Quentin's woeful superiority complex or Julia's dark and edgy flashbacks.

I do like Julia's online depression support group, which requires prospective members to follow a long series of clues and puzzles before they can join.  I also like the underground magicians, how they have day jobs and can focus their studies as much or as little as they want.

The various strands of the story do click together in the end, but not nearly as neatly or intricately as in the first book.  In fact this makes the first book look all the more impressive.


It was a disappointment with moments of rage.

***