This series plunges readers into a world of magic, where gifted young adults navigate the treacherous landscape of a secret magical university. They soon discover that magic is not the whimsical escape they imagined, but a dangerous force with profound consequences. The narratives explore themes of disillusionment, the loss of innocence, and the struggle to find meaning and purpose in a world that is both enchanting and deeply flawed.
Quentin Coldwater is brilliant but miserable. After he graduates from college, he and his friends make a stunning discovery: Fillory--the land of the fantasy novels they read as children--is real and much darker and more dangerous than they could have imagined.
Nothing is ever as it seems Quentin Coldwater is king of the bizarre and wonderful land of Fillory, but the days and nights of royal luxury are losing their appeal and Quentin is getting restless. Even in heaven a man needs a little adventure. So when a steward is murdered on a morning's hunt that is exactly what Quentin gets. But this quest is like no other. What starts as a flight of fancy, a glorified cruise to faraway lands, soon becomes the stuff of nightmares when Quentin is unceremoniously dumped at his parent's house in a decidedly un-magical suburb in Massachusetts. Back in this grey reality, Quentin has never wanted his magical kingdom more. Fortunately he is accompanied by his old friend Julia, who learned her own brand of black and twisted magic outside Brakebills College at an illegal, underground school in the real world. As they struggle through the paranormal alleyways, past Venetian dragons and fairytale houses, it becomes clear that only Julia's black arts can save them. But there is a greater power at work, one that is threatening to destroy Fillory forever, and to defeat it they must unravel the secrets of Julia's tragic past, and the terrible pact she made to gain her power. The Magician King is a grand voyage into the dark, glittering heart of magic, an extraordinary journey that allows the imagination to run riot and proves Grossman is the modern heir to C.S. Lewis.
From Booklist: The third and concluding volume in Grossman's epic Magicians trilogy finds former High King Quentin ejected from the magical kingdom of Fillory and, in short order, given the boot from a too-brief teaching stint at his old alma mater, Brakebills. What is Quentin to do? At loose ends, he joins a ragtag group of magicians-including Plum, an expelled Brakebills student-on a quest to find a mysterious case, contents unknown but presumed to be invaluable. Meanwhile, it appears, amid intimations of apocalypse, that Fillory is coming to an end, and the novel's action begins bouncing back and forth between the kingdom and the real world, where Quentin and Plum are now living in a New York town house, with Quentin determined to use an arcane spell to create a new magician's land. At this point, Quentin's former inamorata Alice shows up; but wait! Isn't she dead? Hmm- there is much more to the story, but suffice it to say that it is endlessly fascinating and always proceeds apace. In sum, this is an absolutely brilliant fantasy filled with memorable characters-old and new-and prodigious feats of imagination. At one point, Quentin muses, "Magic and books: there aren't many things more important than that." The Magician's Land is ineffable proof of that claim. Fantasy fans will rejoice at its publication