The Magician King

"Love this one too!"

"Still magical - just not quite as good as the first. The prose style is still delightful throughout, but the pacing is occasionally a bit too slow. Grossman hovers right on the threshold of becoming too serious/deep in The Magician King but overall it's still a fun, escapist read."

"Well that took longer to read than I expected. Still in a reading slump and I found this book started slow. I had told myself to give it halfway then I could give up, but almost right at 50% on my Kindle things started getting interesting. I think part of what slows it down is the dual narrative--we have Quentin's narrative in the "present" and Julia's narrative telling us about her past. <br/><br/>And I really didn't like Julia or her story. I would skim sections of it just to get the gist of it. Eventually the two narratives do tie together. And man her last chapter was gruesome. <spoiler> I even knew she was going to be raped from reading spoilery reviews and it still was hard to get through. Definitely leaves a bad taste. Even though I only had one chapter to go to finish the book I had to walk away for a bit.</spoiler><br/><br/>I read the first book about 3 years ago so only remembered some of the story, but I would say this book did enough refreshing on what happened that I wasn't too lost. I can't even remember if I planned on picking up the next in the series or not--I did this time because there's been a lot of positive press and reviews about the final installment so I decided to pick it up again. <br/><br/>One of my favorite parts of the series is how sucked into I can get--I know that seems to be contrary to what the beginning of this review would have you believe, but once the narrative picked up I did get really into the story and I always feel like I'm there. Several times when I would put the book down I would have this weird moment of like "Where am I? What's happening?" (The worst is when it happens during lunch at work and I'm like "oh...back to helping patrons...")<br/><br/>Although as I was finishing up the book I realized I was lost. Like what just happened? <spoiler> Like how did getting all 7 keys and opening that door save Fillory and magic? Like this was their backdoor way to save magic if the gods came for it, but how so? </spoiler><br/><br/>At this point, I've made it through 2 out of 3, so I'll eventually get to the last one, just not sure when. <br/><br/>Random note, I had forgotten that it can be quite funny. More in just one-liners or observations but it made me literally laugh out loud."

"Enjoyed it ;) Writer developed as I went on. Started thinking he was ripping off CS Lewis and Harry Potter, which is I guess what other reviews had thought as well, but it steers away from that trend as it moves along. Makes it his own story. Wish you could give like 4.5 on this rating system"