Reading Lev Grossman's Fantasy Series The Magicians for the 3rd Time

For the third time I am undertaking reading Lev Grossman's excellent fantasy trilogy The Magicians, which I consider as my favorite in that genre of fiction.  I've just finished reading (again) the first book, also titled The Magicians.  The protagonist, Quentin Coldwater, is a highly introverted, genius high school graduate on his way to a college interview in New York City with his friends Steve and Julia...the latter for whom Quentin has held a long, futile crush. Events cascade, leading to Quentin mysteriously passing through some bushes in the city to suddenly find himself in upstate New York on the grounds of Brakebills Academy, a secret school of magic to train magicians at a college level. They consider him a prospective student, but first he must pass the entry examination...he gets through it and is admitted.  Meanwhile, Julia has also been there taking the exam...but is rejected.  The series progresses through Quentin's relationships and training at Brakebills and Julia's attempts to find the hidden academy while learning more of the craft among peers outside "official" magical society.  Interwoven through it all is the fantasy (or is it real?) alternative world of Fillory, the setting of several novels from the early twentieth century that bear an uncanny resemblance to C.S. Lewis' Chronicles of Narnia series.  Grossman put a lot of insight and development into his characters, of whom the Brakebills student Penny was the most interesting to me.  Unfortunately, the television adaption of The Magicians, running for five season on the SyFy Channel from 2015 to 2020, changed the book version way too much...including making its "Penny" character virtually unrecognizable from the books'.  Initially, when the TV series first aired I tried to follow it but quickly became "disenchanted"...sometimes I think the producers of screen adaptations bring in the original author as consultant not to make sure they conform to his or her intent but rather to lend a false sense of endorsement as they make wholesale changes in the plot and characters: I've seen this happen with other TV and movie adaptations as well.  In any event, I'm now into the second book, titled The Magician King...it goes deeper into Julia's efforts to develop her magical powers and be accepted by the magical establishment.  Yet I also recognize that The Magicians television version had good acting even if it did diverge too much from Grossman's novels. I'm giving it a second chance after I discovered that Netflix had it, but I sadly expect that neither its tone nor story line will conform in any significant degree to Lev Grossman's memorable and compelling literary epic...