Finished Reading The Magician King

Well, I just completed reading Lev Grossman's novel The Magician King (while sleepily sitting and waiting for my hot water heater to be replaced). Good story, good characters, good ending. If you read The Magicians and liked it, then you will definitely enjoy this sequel. And future offerings in this series, which as far as I am concerned is welcome to go on indefinitely...

While reading these books, one needs to get over the fact that Grossman's fantasy structures are lifted rather deliberately and openly from other famous works. The main source is C.S. Lewis's Chronicles of Narnia. In both Narnia and Fillory, the magical fantasy land of Grossman, there are:

--Talking animals
--Humans from Earth ruling as 2 kings and 2 queens
--A white stag to be hunted
--A middle land between worlds
--An island-hopping voyage on the eastern sea
--Severe time-discrepancies between Earth and the fantasy land for visitors
--Human visitors summoned in different ways to the fantasy land for special quests

Besides C.S. Lewis, Stephen King is apparently a source for Grossman's series as well, with his Dark Tower and Talisman (in collaboration with Peter Straub) stories employing special doors and windows from one world to another. Philip Pullman, another fantasy writer that Lev Grossman reminds me of, also employs this device in the His Dark Materials series.

So if you're just looking to read some new original material just for the sake of the fantasy, you might be disappointed with The Magician King and its predecessor. But it was the intensive character development and the author's ability to flood the reader with countless cultural associations that won me over. And make me look forward impatiently to the next installment, even though the book I have just read hasn't even been out for a month!

I did something after finishing The Magician King that I should have been doing after reading other stories: I wrote down a very general outline of the characters and plot and filed it away, so that when I eventually pick up the next book in the series I'll be able to refresh my memory without having to reread anything...