Read | The Magician’s Land by Lev Grossman

Reading The Magician’s trilogy has been an interesting experience. When I finished the first book of the series, I felt that The Magicians featured an interesting magical world, but one that could have benefited from a better main narrative voice. The Magician King built on what I liked about the The Magicians and finally gave me the character growth that I needed to read, plus the perspective of those who learned magic without the benefit of formal education. Also, it drove home the point that Fillory is really unfair, so it gave readers and its lead character an idea on how the land is not as magically inclusive as one would hope.

I came into my reading of The Magican’s Land with an attempt at not having any expectations, but couldn’t quite keep at bay my hope that author Lev Grossman would conclude the series strongly.

With Fillory closing its magical doors on Quentin Coldwater after his sacrifice so Julia Wicker can fulfill her role as a dryad at the far side of the kingdom, he tries to make his way in the world that he grew up in. Armed with a more mature outlook and an understanding of accepting consequences, he takes on a teaching position at Brakesbill College for Magical Pedagogy, where he also learns that his discipline is actually the repair of small objects. But the peace he establishes there is disrupted when a prank by student Plum Purchas leads to meeting Alice Quinn‘s niffin form, and he gets drawn into the start of another adventure. Meanwhile, Eliot Waugh and Janet Way, who continue their role as Kings and Queens along with Josh Hoberman and Poppy, learn from the ram god Ember that Fillory is dying and they scramble to find answers to help save the realm they consider their home.

Out of the three volumes of The Magician’s trilogy, The Magician’s Land is the one that packs the most punch on every narrative level. Sure, Quentin is still the central character and one who has to find answers in time, but the last installment of the book series also features the points of view of Plum, Eliot and Janet. I’ve mentioned in my post on The Magician King that it benefited greatly from sharing the narrative with Julia, and expanding on that made The Magician’s Land a richer story for readers. Eliot and Janet were secondary characters in previous installments, with their self-destructive tendencies and hard partying ways, but the last book introduced them as characters who didn’t just lounge about enjoying the perks of being king and queen of Fillory. Plum, on the other hand, is a much newer voice in the series, but turned out to be a great complement to Quentin, with her quick mind and innate talent.

Emotions run high throughout the story, from every character central in their respective chapters to those who share those chapters with them. Quentin has come far from his whiny ways in the first book of the trilogy and instead chooses to find something to focus on rather than dwell on what he doesn’t have or don’t want to lose in his life. It was Eliot and Janet, though, that I came to empathize with the most when I read their respective chapters, from Eliot’s announcement that he would never leave Fillory even if it dies, or in Janet’s realization that she cares more than she realized about Fillory or even the people she journeyed with to get there. The two have come far from the indulgent, sarcastic people they were at the start of the series (though they maintain both qualities to some degree), reminding readers that Quentin isn’t the only one who learns maturity. The Magicians trilogy is ultimately a journey of character growth, though it’s been fun reading how Lev Grossman fleshed out its magical world, Earth-bound or otherwise.

Beginnings or returning to them is a recurring theme in The Magician’s Land, with Quentin’s teacher post at Brakesbill where his life with magic began, or with Plum facing a new life without the burden of expectations of her parents or others. And then, there’s Alice, who Quentin swears to return to her human form after her sacrifice in The Magicians. Should Quentin prove successful in doing so, she would have to begin anew as a human after experiencing the powers of a niffin. Readers are also rewarded with reunions that showed that no matter how much they’ve grown, they still tend to act the same way towards each other when they all attended Brakesbill together (Penny with anyone from the group is a prime example, never mind the new knowledge or spiffy new golden hands), making for scenes that are steeped in humor yet tinged with nostalgia.

There’s a great sense of buildup in the novel, one that increased in every chapter, as their individual stories are fleshed out and you come to realize that they are all somehow intertwined. You know that even if the challenges they faced in The Magician’s Land couldn’t very well be the last they would have to survive through, there’s something monumental about the events that would indelibly define them for the rest of their lives. There are some parts of the story that doesn’t surprise me, but the payoff at reading all of Quentin’s adventures and their end was far more satisfying than I ever anticipated it would be.

I knew that The Magicians, despite being burdened by Quentin’s less mature mindset, gave readers insight to a magical world that begs to be discovered… even as author Lev Grossman shows us that it’s not a pretty or forgiving world. The Magician King showed readers that there’s so much more than Quentin in the story, though you learn to like him a bit more, and that there’s much more of the magical world for us to discover with every turn of the page. With The Magician’s Land, I discovered that I’d grown attached to this strange fictional world, with its imperfect people and imperfect magical land that comes with far too many strings. While I felt sadness at its end, there’s also joy at the closure it gives readers at its end even if you know that new adventures await those who survived it. And even if you know that you might never know what those adventures will be like, you can at least be confident knowing that the characters who will have them have grown up enough to find their way and not mess things up… too much.

Happy reading!!