The Magician's Land by Lev Grossman

The Magician's Land is the third book in the amazing The Magicians trilogy by Lev Grossman. For reviews of the first two books, check out The Magicians (The Magicians #1) and The Magician King (The Magicians #2).

Part One - How it ends

Oh yes.
It’s all coming together now...
*pushes glasses back up and tents fingers in an ominous gesture*
Just according to keikaku!

In The Magician’s Land, much like in The Magician King, Lev Grossman sends all his characters their separate way, letting them do their own thing only to, in the end, reveal that they have all been—unknowingly—working towards the same world-saving goal all-along (only this time on a much grander and more awesome scale). Somewhere in there, there’s a nice little metaphor about how all of us are—with the lives we lead—contributing to this grand order of things called the World.

And the World? The World is ending.

The well of deep, deep, deep, and I mean DEEP deep magic that Fillory has drawn on for thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of years, is drying up. It’s all very dramatic, ceremonial, and grand. There are words that must be said, rituals that must transpire, there are protocols in place for this kind of thing... I mean, it’s the End of the World, for Christ’s sake!

And our friends the magicians? They started to really like it here. And they won’t give it up without a fight.

And Lev Grossman lets them have it. This is the Endgame. Nothing is off-limits. The boundaries between the living and the dead are gone as well. Well, that’s not really true. Well, it sorta is.

But basically, the End of the World has created the perfect conditions for the most fun, over-the-top Magicians ride yet. It is everything one could ever need, and it reveals the true beating heart of The Magicians.

There is a magical heist gone wrong, revenge against a rapist god, a giant turtle who is kind of a dick, a book within a book, whale magicians casting endless spells across the ocean floor to keep ancient unthinkable horrors buried deep within the earth—

MAYAKOVSKY RETURNS!

In all his drunken glory, the greatest magician/asshole of the age returns as the Mad Mentor to dispense indispensable advice. And all that may still not be enough…

Part Two - How it starts

It starts, as it so often does, with Fillory…

Well, maybe not exactly Fillory, the magical land from the fictional Fillory & Further series of children’s books, but the idea of Fillory. The idea of a second world, a world somewhere out there, where one could be a king, a hero—heck, even a magician. A world where all one’s hopes and dreams can come true. A world that is, well, more than all *this*.

We all know this world. We all have it in us, in our secret hearts, always beyond reach. It could be Narnia, it could be Hogwarts, it could be the USS Enterprise on its mission to explore strange new worlds. It is all the worlds you fell in love with as a kid, all the worlds you used to daydream about. It is a place you have always wanted to escape to.

We have come full circle: as the culmination of The Magicians trilogy, The Magician’s Land is about that place. It is a story about disillusionment, about growing up, and most importantly, it is a story about grief. As we grow older, we must, inevitably, come to terms with the world and everything it is not, everything we wished it to be. We must learn that magic—in the most straightforward sense of the word—isn’t real, and that it won’t solve our problems.

Also, The Magician’s Land is a story about Quentin Coldwater—disenfranchised and disenchanted, a former king and a magician—as he grows into a man and learns to take responsibility for his own actions. Quentin has spent his entire life in search of a purpose, in search of that world he could finally call home. It is a story about a guy who read about all these amazing and magical places as a kid, and when he grew up, he was never quite able to find them. During the course of his life, he must learn to adapt and look for different things. He must learn to make a place for himself in the world. The Magician’s Land is a story about grief, about living with it, about learning to take it and turn it into something new. If you are fortunate, you might even be able to turn it into something beautiful, magical...

It is a story about all of us. And it starts, as things often do, with Fillory…