An Aside | ‘The Magician King’ by Lev Grossman announced, sequel to ‘The Magicians’
Asides Print This Post January 22nd, 2010
From Publisher’s Weekly (via Mad Hatter's Bookshelf & Book Review:
Tina Bennett at Janklow and Nesbit has closed on a sequel to Lev Grossman’s The Magicians (Viking, Aug. 2009). Molly Stern at Viking (who edited The Magicians) bought North American rights to The Magician King. The new book picks up with protagonist Quentin Coldwater five years after the original—at the end of The Magicians Coldwater is 23—when he and his friends have become royalty in the fantasy world of Fillory. Coldwater, who is dealing with the challenges of being a member of the ruling class, embarks on a dark quest in the novel, which Bennett called “Voyage of the Dawn Treader [book 5 in the Chronicles of Narnia] as rewritten by Raymond Chandler.” Viking is aiming for a fall 2011 release.
The Magicians was a bi-polar book caught in a tug-of-war between Harry Potter and Holden Caulfield – one part self-deprecating coming-of-age-story, one part caught-in-a-magic-school – and had a similarly mixed reception. Critics seemed to either love it or hate it. I fell firmly into the ‘love it’ camp, naming it my favourite book published in 2009. Needless to say, I’m looking forward to the sequel.
What is disconcerting, though, is the seeming shift in The Magician King to the more fantastical, an element of the first novel that even lovers of the book admitted was mediocre compared the earlier portions. It will be interesting to see if Grossman can address some of these criticisms now that he is giving readers more than just a brief peek at the land of Fillory.
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New blog post – Lev Grossman (@leverus) announces THE MAGICIAN KING, a sequel to THE MAGICIANS: http://aidanmoher.com/blog/2010/01/aside...
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@adribbleofink Hummmm that will be interesting.
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Very, very cool. I also fell into the love it catagory. But, I loved it because it was so different from most of the other fantasy books out there, and the last third of the book was a big departure from the first 2/3s. That being said, I did enjoy the fantasy elements there, and I hope that he’ll break away from the influences more so than in the first book. Still, I’ll be picking up this one for sure.
I really liked the Magicians myself. I was a bit depressed by the end, probably because I grew so attached to the characters. Looking forward to the sequel.
Don’t read too much into a 100-word PW blurb. I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised.
Ooh, secrets!
What interests me most about the blurb is the reference to Raymond Chandler. When will we get a more significant peek at the novel, Lev?
@Lev Grossman – hopefully we can expect some more counter-genre story? I think I liked that most of all.
@aidan I don’t know. I read part of it at a reading this week. It was actually a bit that I had cut from the ms, but it gave some of the flavor.
@Andrew me too. I’m going to try to play to my strengths.
I’ll have to add this to my list of books to check out. At the rate I’m adding books, though, I may have to clone myself to get through half of them.
Outstanding cover art, btw.