Lev Grossman's The Magician's Land
Well, so Lev Grossman's trilogy has come to an end, and Quentin is just as insufferable as ever (I can never tell if that's deliberate or not!). Actually, I liked this pretty well--it's somewhat less problematic than the earlier books (no elder god rape), and has some non-Quentin POV sections that I liked a lot (cynical Janet is great, and new character Plum is interesting as well). I also liked all of the Fillory stuff, which is once again drawing really heavily on the Narnia books, but with a darker edge. Once the story gets going, it's pretty compelling, and even Quentin gets less annoying. I don't want to say anything else for fear of spoilers, but I thought this was a solid conclusion to the series. B+.
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A review copy was provided by the publisher. This book will be released on August 5th.
Actually, I have been thinking more about this, so here are a couple of additional thoughts.
ReplyDelete--The end is supremely goofy/wish fulfillment-y.
--The women are, as usual, underbaked characters. At one point Quention says he never knew why Alice loved him, and I never knew either! Quentin is the worst! And this book needs way more Julia.