Final thoughts on The Magicians, with only very general spoilers:

It was worth reading. Lev Grossman's prose has sparks of absolute beauty in it—descriptive moments especially— and he writes excellent action scenes. The final Alice-vs.-[spoiler] scene was wonderful to read; I immediately forgot all the things I hated about the characters and just enjoyed. I loved watching her fight for and with not love & justice but anger and skill. Positively badass. The end of the fight, though . . . let's just say 'not to my taste' and 'rather problematic' and leave it at that. Combined with the book's other issues with female characters, it feels like a retreading of an old sexist trope. And everything after that was pretty much downhill; I ended up hating Quentin even more. What a jerk.

Also, I can't help but reflect that the thing Elliot does at the end of Book 3 would have been profoundly satisfying and not a little triumphant in something like Utena or Princess Tutu. (There's a quote from the Utena movie I want to compare it to, but it's kind of a spoiler for this here book.) It was written to be painful and hollow and it does read that way, but that's not at all how I am used to reading that sort of thing. Nor the way I like to.

I did enjoy Elliot's "I thought about being a queen," and [spoiler]'s reappearance at the very end, though.


Verdict: Lev Grossman should write lots and lots more books, provided we can get someone else to do the plotting & characters.