Via The AVClub, Lev Grossman revealed the cover and first details about The Magician’s Land. Grossman won over fans with the release of The Magicians, a twisted and grown-up mix of Harry Potter-meets-Narnia, and continued to cement himself as one of the most interesting young contemporary fantasists with the release of the sequel, The Magician King. The Magician’s Land is the third and final volume of the trilogy and, as the title suggests, it focusses heavily on the magical land of Fillory (Grossman’s Narnia analogue).
Spoilers below, for those who haven’t read the first two volumes.
Quentin Coldwater has been cast out of Fillory, the secret magical land of his childhood dreams. With nothing left to lose he returns to where his story began, the Brakebills Preparatory College of Magic. But he can’t hide from his past, and it’s not long before it comes looking for him.
Along with Plum, a brilliant young undergraduate with a dark secret of her own, Quentin sets out on a crooked path through a magical demimonde of gray magic and desperate characters. But all roads lead back to Fillory, and his new life takes him to old haunts, like Antarctica, and to buried secrets and old friends he thought were lost forever. He uncovers the key to a sorcery masterwork, a spell that could create magical utopia, a new Fillory—but casting it will set in motion a chain of events that will bring Earth and Fillory crashing together. To save them he will have to risk sacrificing everything.
The Magician’s Land is an intricate thriller, a fantastical epic, and an epic of love and redemption that brings the Magicians trilogy to a magnificent conclusion, confirming it as one of the great achievements in modern fantasy. It’s the story of a boy becoming a man, an apprentice becoming a master, and a broken land finally becoming whole.
Like its predecessors before it, The Magician’s Land features a gorgeous cover with art from photographer Didier Massard. The Magician’s Land will be available on August 4th, 2014.