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The Magicians
- A Novel
- Narrated by: Mark Bramhall
- Length: 17 hrs and 24 mins
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Publisher's summary
Quentin Coldwater is brilliant but miserable. A senior in high school, he's still secretly preoccupied with a series of fantasy novels he read as a child, set in a magical land called Fillory. Imagine his surprise when he finds himself unexpectedly admitted to a very secret, very exclusive college of magic in upstate New York, where he receives a thorough and rigorous education in the craft of modern sorcery.
He also discovers all the other things people learn in college: friendship, love, sex, booze, and boredom. Something is missing, though. Magic doesn't bring Quentin the happiness and adventure he dreamed it would. After graduation, he and his friends make a stunning discovery: Fillory is real. But the land of Quentin's fantasies turns out to be much darker and more dangerous than he could have imagined. His childhood dream becomes a nightmare with a shocking truth at its heart.
At once psychologically piercing and magnificently absorbing, The Magicians boldly moves into uncharted literary territory, imagining magic as practiced by real people, with their capricious desires and volatile emotions. Lev Grossman creates an utterly original world in which good and evil aren't black and white, love and sex aren't simple or innocent, and power comes at a terrible price.
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Editorial reviews
Intellectually gifted but emotionally unfulfilled, Quentin Coldwater is as much at sea as any high school senior. He still takes refuge in the fantasy novel series he read as a kid, waiting for happiness to fall in his lap. Surprisingly, it does indeed seem to when an elite and secret college of magic recruits him. Mark Brahmall wonderfully inflects the gaggle of fallible little geniuses Quentin grows up with there: Elliott the flaming drunkard, Janet the flashy attention hog, Alice the wallflower, Josh the bumbling frat boy, and Penny the punk rocker. This is not the nice and polite world of Hogwarts. These 17-year-olds spend five years drinking, screwing, cursing, and occasionally buckling down to work with spells that sound more like chemistry labs than fantastic miracles.
Magic is hard, and growing up proves even harder. Brahmall ages this group of would-be adventurers, gradually inserting the pessimistic uncertainty that creeps in as their graduation approaches, and then the slovenly vulgarity that accompanies their post-grad malaise in New York. But their voices find fresh purpose and energy when Penny discovers that Fillory, the magical land of those books from their youth, is real. Fraught with the tensions sprouting between them, each member of Quentin's posse has reasons to escape into Fillory. Brahmall gives voice to everything from a birch tree to an ancient ram, as the group's quest for a brighter future turns ever more ugly and alarming. Quentin's once idyllic dream now corrupted, he struggles to regain a sense of self and return to the more banal hostilities of the real world.
This is a story narrated with all the wonderment and gravitas inherent in the great tradition of magical coming-of-age tales, to be sure, but it rests firmly on the rocky foundations of a realistic human volatility and longing that may want to keep the characters snatching defeat from the jaws of victory to their bitter end. This world is nothing like Narnia or Middle Earth, and listeners with knowledge of those places will find plenty of insider references here to keep them laughing through the disasters. Grossman has captured a shamefully universal set of psychological quandaries, and Brahmall has expressed them in tones that are terrifyingly recognizable. Megan Volpert
Critic reviews
"Provocative, unput-downable....one of the best fantasies I've read in ages." ( Fantasy & Science Fiction)
" The Magicians is to Harry Potter as a shot of Irish whiskey is to a glass of weak tea." (George R.R. Martin)
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Story
Named a New York Times notable book of 1994, The Iron Dragon's Daughter tells the heartrending story of a changeling child who is kidnapped to a realm of malls and machines and enslaved in a vast, infernal factory. Ultimately, she escapes and attempts to educate herself about this alien world, while being tormented by visions of the life she was denied.
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Inconsistent story and makes for a poor experience
- By Martin Smith on 07-10-15
By: Michael Swanwick
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The Book of Magic
- By: Gardner Dozois - editor, Scott Lynch, Elizabeth Bear, and others
- Narrated by: Karissa Vacker, Sile Bermingham, Maxwell Caulfield, and others
- Length: 24 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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Hot on the heels of Gardner Dozois's acclaimed anthology The Book of Swords comes this companion volume devoted to magic. How could it be otherwise? For every Frodo, there is a Gandalf... and a Saruman. For every Dorothy, a Glinda... and a Wicked Witch of the West. What would Harry Potter be without Albus Dumbledore... and Severus Snape? Figures of wisdom and power, possessing arcane, often forbidden knowledge, wizards and sorcerers are shaped - or misshaped - by the potent magic they seek to wield.
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some stinkers mostly good
- By M.T. on 12-11-18
By: Gardner Dozois - editor, and others
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The Best Horror of the Year, Volume 4
- By: Ellen Datlow - author/editor, Stephen King, Peter Straub
- Narrated by: Meredith Mitchell, Rebecca Mitchell, Michael Healy, and others
- Length: 16 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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With tales from Laird Barron, Stephen King, John Langan, Peter Straub, and many others, and featuring Datlow’s comprehensive overview of the year in horror, now, more than ever, The Best Horror of the Year provides the petrifying horror fiction readers have come to expect - and enjoy.
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Only a few decent stories in this bunch.
- By Jerry on 12-06-14
By: Ellen Datlow - author/editor, and others
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The Warrior Heir
- The Heir Chronicles, Book 1
- By: Cinda Williams Chima
- Narrated by: Robert Ramirez
- Length: 12 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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When 16-year-old Jack forgets to take his medicine one morning, he soon learns what the medicine is really for. It's a suppressant for his magical powers....He's a Warrior Heir.
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Better if you read yourself
- By Sara on 10-28-08
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Darling Jim
- A Novel
- By: Christian Moerk
- Narrated by: Stephen Hoye, Justine Eyre
- Length: 10 hrs and 31 mins
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When two sisters and their aunt are found dead in their suburban Dublin home, it seems that the secret behind their untimely demise will never be known. But then Niall, a young mailman, finds a mysterious diary in the post office's dead-letter bin. From beyond the grave, Fiona Walsh shares the most tragic love story he's ever heard---and her tale has only just begun.
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Great Story
- By Book Worm on 05-28-09
By: Christian Moerk
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Shadow Show
- All-New Stories in Celebration of Ray Bradbury
- By: Sam Weller - editor, Mort Castle - editor
- Narrated by: George Takei, Edward Herrmann, Kate Mulgrew, and others
- Length: 14 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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Ray Bradbury - peerless storyteller, poet of the impossible, and one of America's most beloved authors - is a literary giant whose remarkable career spanned seven decades. Now 26 of today's most diverse and celebrated authors offer new short works in honor of the master; stories of heart, intelligence, and dark wonder from a remarkable range of creative artists.
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THE MAN WHO FORGOT RAY BRADBURY
- By Jim "The Impatient" on 05-27-17
By: Sam Weller - editor, and others
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The Epic Crush of Genie Lo
- By: F. C. Yee
- Narrated by: Nancy Wu
- Length: 8 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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The struggle to get into a top-tier college consumes 16-year-old Genie's every waking thought. But when she discovers she's a celestial spirit who's powerful enough to bash through the gates of heaven with her fists, her perfectionist existence is shattered. Enter Quentin, a transfer student from China whose tone-deaf assertiveness beguiles Genie to the brink of madness. Quentin nurtures Genie's bodacious transformation - sometimes gently, sometimes aggressively - as her sleepy suburb in the Bay Area comes under siege from hell spawn.
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Enjoyed it more than I expected.
- By kevin on 07-27-21
By: F. C. Yee
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The Book Jumper
- By: Mechthild Glaser
- Narrated by: Mary Sarah
- Length: 8 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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Amy's grandmother, Lady Mairead, insists that Amy must read while she resides at Lennox House - but not in the usual way. It turns out that Amy is a book jumper, able to leap into a story and interact with the world inside. As thrilling as Amy's new power is, it also brings danger: someone is stealing from the books she visits, and that person may be after her life. Teaming up with fellow book jumper, Will, Amy vows to get to the bottom of the thefts - at whatever cost.
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Beautiful 🥲
- By DOMINIQUE on 06-22-21
By: Mechthild Glaser
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Dead Set
- A Novel
- By: Richard Kadrey
- Narrated by: Kate Rudd
- Length: 7 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
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After her father's funeral, Zoe moved to the big city with her mother to start over. But change always brings trials, and life in the city is not so easy. Money is tight, and Zoe's only escape, as has always been the case, is in her dreams - a world apart from her troubled real life where she can spend time with her closest companion: her lost brother, Valentine.
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Cool idea that wanders around.
- By Caseym on 04-03-16
By: Richard Kadrey
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Dead Beautiful
- By: Yvonne Woon
- Narrated by: Caitlin Davies
- Length: 12 hrs and 33 mins
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After Renee Winters discovers her parents dead, her grandfather sends her off to Gottfried Academy in Maine. It’s here she meets Dante, to whom she feels inexplicably drawn. As they get to know each other better, Dante can’t seem to control his attraction either, and they being a complex and dangerous romance. Dangerous because Dante is hiding a frightening secret.
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Dead beautiful
- By Robert on 10-17-10
By: Yvonne Woon
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Gravity's Rainbow
- By: Thomas Pynchon, Frank Miller - cover design
- Narrated by: George Guidall
- Length: 37 hrs and 21 mins
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Winner of the 1973 National Book Award, Gravity's Rainbow is a postmodern epic, a work as exhaustively significant to the second half of the 20th century as Joyce's Ulysses was to the first. Its sprawling, encyclopedic narrative and penetrating analysis of the impact of technology on society make it an intellectual tour de force.
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"Time to touch the person next to you"
- By Jefferson on 07-04-16
By: Thomas Pynchon, and others
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The Raven Boys (The Raven Cycle, Book 1)
- By: Maggie Stiefvater
- Narrated by: Will Patton
- Length: 11 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
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It is freezing in the churchyard, even before the dead arrive. Every year, Blue Sargent stands next to her clairvoyant mother as the soon-to-be dead walk past. Blue herself never sees them - not until this year, when a boy emerges from the dark and speaks directly to her. His name is Gansey, and Blue soon discovers that he is a rich student at Aglionby, the local private school. Blue has a policy of staying away from Aglionby boys. Known as Raven Boys, they can only mean trouble. But Blue is drawn to Gansey, in a way she can't entirely explain.
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Predictable Prep Boy Meets Witchy Girl
- By FanB14 on 01-29-13
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InterWorld
- By: Neil Gaiman, Michael Reaves
- Narrated by: Christopher Evan Welch
- Length: 5 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
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Performance
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Joey Harker isn't a hero. In fact, he's the kind of guy who gets lost in his own house. But then one day, Joey gets really lost. He walks straight out of his world and into another dimension. Joey's walk between the worlds makes him prey to two terrible forces: armies of magic and science who will do anything to harness his power to travel between dimensions.
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A good listen
- By Gurmukh on 10-31-07
By: Neil Gaiman, and others
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Because You Love to Hate Me
- 13 Tales of Villainy
- By: Ameriie - editor
- Narrated by: Ameriie, Kevin T. Collins, Julia Whelan
- Length: 10 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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In this unique YA anthology, 13 acclaimed, best-selling authors team up with 13 influential BookTubers to reimagine fairy tales from the oft-misunderstood villains' points of view. These fractured, unconventional spins on classics like Medusa, Sherlock Holmes, and 'Jack and the Beanstalk' provide a behind-the-curtain look at villains' acts of vengeance, defiance, and rage - and the pain, heartbreak, and sorrow that spurned them on. No fairy tale will ever seem quite the same again!
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I enjoyed more than I expected
- By Doha on 08-30-17
By: Ameriie - editor
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Bleeding Violet
- By: Dia Reeves
- Narrated by: Suzy Jackson
- Length: 9 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
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With a head plagued by hallucinations, a medicine cabinet full of pills, and a closet stuffed with frilly, violet dresses, Hanna's tired of being the outcast, the weird girl, the freak. So she runs away to Portero, Texas, in search of a new home. But Portero is a stranger town than Hanna expects. She discovers secrets that would terrify any normal soul. Good thing for Hanna, she's far from normal. As this crazy girl meets an even crazier town, only two things are certain: Anything can happen, and no one is safe.
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Didn't like it. Sorry, not sorry
- By Cii'Em on 02-15-16
By: Dia Reeves
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Great start, but it lost me.
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What listeners say about The Magicians
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- paul
- 05-31-14
Not your ordinary book
The Magicians isn't about friendship Harry Potter thrives on, or the beauty of another world that Narnia is about. But it is commonly falsely compared the two. The Magicians is not for those looking for the two, it borrows some ideas from the two, but is nothing like either.
The Magicians is in the best way I can describe a book that understands what it is straight from the beginning. Though not a happy uplifting book, its a great view of how magic would be used in the real world.
The only way I can tell someone if they would like this book or not is if they understand this is about a group of unhappy smart people who discover they can use magic and that the main character is someone who is self destructive and would do anything in his search for happiness.
The Magicians is Beautiful, not flawless. It's not for everyone and it won't be a story that I would recommend to most people, but to those who are looking for a great story and aren't afraid of imperfect characters and concepts that aren't completely original then The Magicians is territory that must be explored.
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15 people found this helpful
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- breckoz
- 04-24-11
Disappointing
Lev Grossman creates a fantastic world of magic. However, it does not live up to expectations. The main character becomes distasteful and depressing. Many parts of the book seemed rushed while other parts were drawn out with boring talk. I would have liked to see more adventure, discovery and have a hero emerge or at least find some redeeming qualities in the characters. I give it 3 stars for its potential. I hope Lev grows as a writer through this book and produces a better sequel.
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- william greenawalt
- 01-14-20
Not high fantasy, and that's what makes it so good
First I'll say that I absolutely love the idea behind this book. Kinda like an adult Harry Potter finds a dark Narnia. The narration is pretty solid and I enjoy the writing style. It's setting in modern day New York and a works jumping mechanism so similar to Narnia makes a lot of it very easy to assimilate and understand. No world building necessary. There is a magic system, but it isn't serious a focus on it by any means and I love that it's not. Magic is there, it does cool stuff, nuff said. The people and their relationships with each other, themselves, and the worlds around them is the single largest driving factor here.
Secondly, you'll see a lot of people disparaging this book and it seems to me that nearly all of them came in expecting something specific, my advice is not to do that. This isn't Robert Jordan, or Raymond E Feist, Tolkien or even CS Lewis. Grossman takes elements from the real world and blends them into aspects from fantasy you're already familiar with. People go on about the characters being unlikable, and it bothers me that they don't seem to understand that there is serious realism in that. Most people are NOT likeable in their late teens and early twenties with such an overhead view of them. But this series is about their growth, Quentin begins his magical studies as a mediocre magician, and he ends it three books later still far from the best, but he is leagues beyond where he started. You meet him and his friends at a very selfish point in their lives where they can barely see past themselves, as is true for most people, but you'll say goodbye to a man that fully understands his place in life and appreciates the people he has above all else with hints of melancholy but not regret towards the things he's sacrificed to keep them safe. He'll become someone worthy of your attention and you'll feel all the more invested having remembered where he started.
As I've said this is a book about people not magic, though you'll find ample amounts of the latter in it. One caveat is that I didn't listen to these novels until after is watched all four seasons of The Magicians on Syfy. The show gave me a much deeper understanding of these characters and also allowed me to envision their faces and mannerisms as I listened. And for anyone that thinks the show has better more likeable characters you should probably go back and rewatch the series, they aren't much different in their motivations from the books if at all.
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- Cabe
- 02-01-17
The Book That Never Ends
The author strikes me as being the type of writer that doesn't use a formal outline. I say this because there's a natural breaking point where the book should've ended and a new one begun, but it doesn't. It just keeps going and going and going. Toward the end the main character becomes fatigued with his personal story, and I found myself in complete agreement.
The story meanders all over the place in a remarkable setting where very little remarkable happens. The main character is a boring whiney drama queen that ends up doing nothing heroic. I know that having a main character that's actually heroic is a bit of a trope, but without it you end up with a character that's difficult to root for. Here's hoping that he'll actually end up doing something interesting in the next book. I never thought that I was an optimist, but I guess I must be.
The setting is far more interesting than the characters, and therefore the story doesn't quite live up to its potential. I gave this book 3 stars because it's an unremarkable score for an unremarkable story.
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- Ginny
- 07-13-18
I felt like this one was a slog
Total disclaimer: I came to read the book because I loved the TV series, and had heard the next season would largely be based on the third book. Anyways, I found this book to be such a tedious slog. Quentin is an insufferable a-hole, completely unlikeable, so to have all the drama told from his viewpoint was pretty rough. I found the showrunners have been able to make Q completely adorable. Also, there are some really lazy writing traits, like instead of writing about big moments, like when the Beast shows up, these are all done in recaps, so we don't really get to "see" them occur in real time, which really takes the bite (literally in this case) out of the scenes. I found as well that he does not write compelling female characters, at all.
The narrator is wonderful however, with the exception of how he pronounces "sloth" like "sloath", otherwise he is really great.
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- jonmino
- 09-30-09
Loved it
First off I agree, this is definitely not for kids. Other than that, I truly loved this book. I loved everything about it. I could hardly put it down. I would highly recommend it.
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- Shay
- 04-06-10
A big risk...
I give Lev props for introducing a school that teaches magic with the Harry Potter phenomenon coming to its sad end, but I think the point could have been delivered in about half the time.
This book is 17 hours long, and because of that, there are large portions of the reading where you want to skip ahead and say "get to the point."
The book altogether is alright, however I don't know that I would recommend it to someone that has a passion for the Harry Potter and Narnia universes.
Narration was decent
-T
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- Amazon Customer
- 02-14-17
Lame story
Too many references to Narnia but no original excitement of it. too long and slow
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- Olivia E.
- 02-27-17
interesting...
kinda of a harry potter meets the chronicles of Narnia with a little wizard of oz sprinkled in (the book, not the movie)-- rated R versions. overall, it's entertaining.
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- Seantae seantae
- 03-02-17
TV show is much better
The narration is too long and the show is much better. Do not waste your valuable time.
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