Harry Potter for grown ups

Just finished listening to Lev Grossman's The Magicians and can't help but take a sec to reflect on it here. To say Magicians is fantasy is so not enough. More like meta-fantasy. More like socio-meta-fantasy with a tinge of horror. Is that a genre?

Clearly Grossman did some thinking about what the world would be like if it really had a magical element. Okay -- that sounds a little like saying Brooks' World War Z is grounded in scientific fact except for the zombie part. But hang in there a minute.

What if a brilliant young man -- someone smart enough to  spend a life frustrated by not being able to acknowledge that there really is something more to his fancy card tricks than hours of practice -- suddenly discovered magic existed after all? That alone, really, would have to put even the most grounded of us a little on edge. I'd like to think we'd all handle it as well as Harry did, but really -- wouldn't closeted magicians need a bit of therapy?

Unfortunately Quentin Coldwater barely readjusts before he's plunged into five years of grueling training that make Hogwarts look like an all-inclusive island vacation. Grossman's magical world is imaginative and creative and loaded with lots of fantastic bits, but it never feels safe. It's edgy and downright terrifying at times -- and really, wouldn't a world where physics and the like no longer applied feel a little out there? Especially in the hands of  outwardly cocky but inwardly unsure 19 year olds? 

And so what do full trained and graduated magicians actually do? And once they've done it, then what? What do they do with all of it? Like in their heads? Really, if you really had to face down He Who Must Not Be Named one day, wouldn't that just wreck your plans to go to hang out at Starbucks the next day? Life just doesn't march cheerily on, really?

I love that Grossman tackles these questions and tells a great, heart-pounding story too. The novel is loaded with lots of nods to Lewis, Rowling, Tolkien, White, Baum and the rest, but Grossman takes things to a whole new level. Adults who loved those classics might think themselves ready to handle magic without the safety net -- but expect to be chilled to the bone!