One of the things I like most about The Magicians and The Magician’s Land is the way they play with the tropes of myth and fantasy and quest narratives, the way that the quests in those books are never entirely straightforward, the way that a world in which magic exists is not necessarily a world centered around an Epic Clash between Good and Evil. The Magician’s Land is more of that, and is a really satisfying conclusion to this trilogy.
The story is basically two parallel narratives that end up intersecting: Quentin Coldwater, now 29, gets and loses a teaching job at Brakebills, his magical alma mater, and then signs on for a contract job stealing a very important suitcase with presumably magical contents. (Plum, a young woman he knows from Brakebills, is on the job too.) So there’s a heist/caper story, but it’s not straightforward, in the same way the quests in these books are a little aslant. Meanwhile, in Fillory, Janet and Eliot and Poppy and Josh hear that Fillory is ending, and try to figure out what, if anything, they can do to save it, which involves Janet and Eliot going on a quest to try to find the answers.
There’s lots of humor in this book, but also lots of other things: beautiful descriptive passages, and introspection, and tenderness, and Quentin having finally grown up.
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