The Magicians

The Magicians

By Lev Grossman

416 pages

17 hours and 24 minutes listening time

Grade Troll (F-)

One of my favorite blogs Lovely Little Shelf reviewed this blog awhile ago. I have been saving it all this time until I finished this book. I started it about March and yes, I just finished it. My favorite part about her review of this book is this part:

Conclusion: I don’t know what to say. I liked it. I did. I would say give this shot, but go in knowing that it is a “tribute” book. Like tribute bands, they’re never as good as the original and you always leave wondering 1- why that band doesn’t do their own music and 2- why you didn’t just jam to a cd of the original band in your car and save your cash. That’s kind of what happened here. It’s a tribute. If you read it with that in mind, I think that you’ll like what you find.

This is what I have to say about it. First off, a lesson in vocabulary...

Tribute: A gift, testimonial, compliment, or the like, given as due or in acknowledgment of gratitude or esteem.

Parody: A poor or feeble imitation or semblance; travesty

And this one just for good measure...

Crap On: To botch, ruin, or cheapen, make a mess of.

A tribute, maybe. A parody, probably. Crap on, most definitely.

The problem with comparing this book with a tribute band, is that most the time they are most the time easy to get through, unless of course they are a tribute to U2, which even listening to the real band is painful.

This book was so terrible. I just struggled to get through it. Do I remember any of what really happened? No. It was very forgettable. In most of the parts all I heard was "blah blah blah, my life sucks" "blah blah blah Alice hates me" "blah blah blah I am in an imitation land of Naria but I have to fight this really strange human creature but my magic is far less superior than anything they do in Harry Potter."

This book was terribly painful in parts. I also had to suppress laughter because when the narrator tried to do voices one of his characters sounded like Kermit the Frog. Painful, that is what this book was.

I decided that since this book tried the to be too much like Harry Potter, I would just rate it using the rating systems of the HP OWL exams. It is getting a "T" for Troll.

Don't waste your time.