Oz’s Bag of Holding: My Beef with Lev Grossman’s The Magicians and Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials
I have here a Bag of Holding. I am now going to pull some things out of it…
Well, I did read Lev Grossman’s The Magicians back in 2011. Now that The Magicians Trilogy is generating so much buzz (consequent to the popular Syfy series now in its second season), I suppose I’ll have to say something about it. However, what I say won’t be very nice. [Here is another review by Chris Braak that appeared in Black Gate back in 2011.]
Since it had been awhile, I went back and skimmed through the final chapters of the first installment. It was enough to remind me why I did not enthusiastically delve into the second book (I did pick up The Magician King, got a chapter in and set it aside. I might go back to it, if anyone furnishes me with a compelling argument that the trilogy as a whole manages to ameliorate the criticism I am about to level against the first book.)
It is well written. The thinly-veiled pastiches of Narnia, Hogwarts, and other beloved fantastical realms are, on the whole, perceptively done. Grossman manages both to evoke the sense of wonder of those books and to convincingly portray characters sensitive to the special draw of Faerie — kindred spirits who, deep down, wish they could escape our world into those imaginary places. Grossman is clearly no stranger to the deep affinity such works can stir in the receptive reader. And he gets great mileage (meta-mileage?) out of having the characters allude to and reference J.K. Rowling and J.R.R. Tolkien and all the other fantasy authors they grew up with.
But, like Philip Pullman with the His Dark Materials trilogy, Grossman seems to feel some obligation to poop on that to which he is ostensibly paying homage.
