Just Finished Reading Lev Grossman's The Magician's Land

The Magician's Land is the final book in Lev Grossman's Magicians series.  Having thoroughly enjoyed the first two books of this very irreverent and adult foray into the fantasy genre, I was eager enough to start into the final book as soon as I was aware of its publication (I don't keep up too well with when new books come out).  But first I felt the need to go back through the first two books to refresh my memory (I wonder how many other readers of series do this).  Now, I've finished The Magician's Land and have to admit to a sense of satisfaction about it all.  The only problem is, there is no way I can adequately describe the plot to the story in this book without not only giving it away, but also giving away what happened in the first book (The Magicians) and the second (The Magician King).  But I can still provide some general reactions I got from it...

The chief protagonist in the Magicians series is a young man named Quentin Coldwater.  Early in the first book, while thinking that he was going to a Manhattan-based interview for admission into an Ivy League college, Quentin suddenly finds himself whisked off to a mysterious campus in upstate New York, where he is tested for admission into Brakebills, an academy designed for training magicians.  And by magicians, I don't mean the showmen who ply their tricks before an audience, but rather people who possess magical abilities, like the wizards in the Harry Potter series.  For a while, it looked as if Grossman was going to provide a more adult counterpart of Rowling's Hogwarts Academy, but as the story progresses a different target of imitation is revealed: C.S. Lewis and his fantasy world of Narnia.  Only in Quentin's world, the stories he grew up loving were about an imaginary land called Fillory.  And now I'm at the point where I feel a little reticent about describing what happens next.  But you might well imagine that Quentin has his friends, enemies, mentors, love interests, and many, many mysteries to solve.  Through his losses, as well as his victories, he grows up and discovers himself and what's important in life (and what isn't).  So in an important respect, this series is about someone growing up from an immature adolescent mindset into a caring, mature adult.  Only with Quentin, what he does has an enormous impact on his friends, foes, and surroundings...after all, he turns out to be no mediocre magician.

I think you'd enjoy Lev Grossman's Magicians series if you liked reading through the Harry Potter and Chronicles of Narnia series (and I mean READING, not just watching the movies)...in an important sense, these three series are not as much about the "magic" as much as they are about how people's characters, especially as they pertain to aspects of personality like jealousy, loyalty, regret, courage, sacrificial love, idealism, cynicism, timidity, and boldness, affect each other and the world...and how they can change within individuals over time, especially after they endure personal storms, some of them devastating in nature...

I will make one comment about the ending to The Magician's Land: I don't know whether Lev Grossman intended it to be this way, but it did bring a satisfying sense of closure to the series for me...although it did leave the door open wide enough to start a new one based on where things left off, should the author wish it.  After all, it wouldn't be the first time a writer came back to tack on additional books to an already-concluded series (Terry Goodkind and Brandon Sanderson are doing this as I write)...