How can I describe the Magicians series of books - it is sort of like an adult Harry Potter where magically inclined young adults are found and "auditioned / tested" for admittance into Brakebills, a magic school. Those who pass their test are admitted to this school located in New York - but hidden from non-magical people by magical charms and spells. A group of students there find a magical mysterious land called Fillory - a land that they read about in childhood books and thought was just fictional. They discover that Fillory exists, and they are it's new kings and queens.
All kids of shit goes down in Books 1 and 2, and Book 3 picks up with Quentin teaching at Brakebills and saving one of the Brakebills students, Plum, from a flaming blue Niffin named Alice. Alice used to be human, and used to be Quentin's girlfriend. A Niffin is kind of like the Phoenix from Xmen - a human/non-human/monster/non-monster/flying/flaming being - except Niffins are blue.
"... her body had burned, but the essence of Alice was in there somewhere, the Alice he knew, trapped inside that toxic blue flame like a fly in amber. He'd recognized her, the old Alice, the one he used to love, twisted and distorted but real, and he couldn't leave her there. If there was some way to get her out, he would find it."Quentin finds himself embarking on an unknown adventure with Plum and some other magical misfits at the request of a talking bird. Quentin isn't sure why the others were doing it, but he would stop at nothing to get Alice back and to do that, he needed money, and this adventured promised a large sum of money if completed successfully. None of them know what the bird wants or what the bird's endgame is, but all of the misfit magicians are up for the adventure and challenge (and the money).
Some really cool stuff goes down. Plum and Quentin go looking for some advice from one of their former Brakebills teachers at Brakebills South - in the Antarctic. To get there, they fly on a plane part of the way to a small town in Tierra del Fuego, then decide to turn themselves into whales to swim the rest of the way.
"... Quentin and Plum were magicians, so they waited until midnight, then cast spells on their shoes and hiked out onto the channel on foot. It was tricky at first, they made it out through the mercifully light surf and got used to the rhythm of the swells. It was only their shoes that were buoyant, so if they fell over they'd get wet like anybody else... Quentin took a deep breath and rolled his shoulders. It was rare for magicians to kill themselves with their own magic, but stories that ended that way usually began by doing something like this... Quentin braced himself. Based on his memory of the goose transformation back at Brakebills he was pretty sure this was going to be really unpleasant. He took a deep breath, held up his hands, and made a gentle downbeat, like he was cueing the start of a Mahler symphony. It began. Surprisingly, it wasn't that bad... The only real moment of panic came when he toppled forward into the water and went under. His human instincts told him he was about to freeze or drown or both, but he did neither. The water was neither warm nor cold - it was nothing. It was like air. He did utter some truly epic, booming whale-sneezes before his blowhole-based respiratory system got going. But even that was kind of enjoyable. And then everything was still. He was hanging in the void, neutrally buoyant, twenty feet below the surface. He was a blue whale... Quentin didn't know when he'd ever felt so calm... Once they cleared Tierra del Fuego Quentin's sensorium expanded hugely. His world became enormous."Grossman does a fantastic job writing about Quentin's and Plum's experiences as whales - oh how I wish I could experience that... (side note: I scuba dive, and once on a dive with my brother in Hawaii, we were diving the back wall of Molokini Crater late in December, and we heard the migrating whales singing when we were probably about 70-80 feet under water - it was MAGICAL).
All kinds of magical shit goes down - Grossman goes between what is happening with Quentin and Plum on earth, and what is happening with the others who are in Fillory. Janet is riding on a hippogriff high above a gigantic free-for-all-melee involving all kinds of magical and talking creatures:
"For a minute it looked like the centaurs were going to make the difference, but then boom: a spearhead of unicorns rammed into the side of their formation. Jesus. Janet had to turn away. You only had to see a unicorn lay open the side of a centaur once, the ribcage flashing white when the ripped skin flopped down, to swear a mighty oath never to fuck with or even look at another unicorn again. I'm putting down the hearts and fluffy clouds and backing away slowly. Don't want any trouble here. You can have all the rainbows. It was - viewed from a certain detached, clinical angle - like Fillory was playing chess with itself. A band of minotaurs straggled up, panting, having been outdistanced by the centaurs but plainly on their side. But just as they did flocks of griffins and pegasi began crisscrossing the battle space from above, kicking and raking and tearing. Actually the pegasi appeared to be worth fuck-all from an offensive perspective - their little hooves were too light and delicate to do much damage to anybody, and they were too fussy to beat anybody with their wings the way a swan might. But still, total respect to them for showing up. And what did it matter because the griffins were cleaning house. Jesus, those guys were like flying tanks. Beaks and claws. Built for war."
Um, yeah, don't mess with the unicorns.
This book has a satisfying ending. But, of course, it is an ending that is totally open to another book in this series. We'll just have to wait and see.
So, if you like books about magic, are looking for something more to read after Harry Potter, pick up this series. You'll probably enjoy it!
Now - on to the first book in a series my 12-year-old nephew is reading: The Alchemyst: The Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel by Michael Scott. Let's see what has got Alex so excited!
