Before long plane rides I like to have something addictively readable downloaded on to my Kindle so that I am innoculated from all forms of travel frustration: long lines (I read in line), long flights, layovers and unexpected delays. This year's winter break travel had all these and more—but with a good book going it is all the same to me whether I am in my living room armchair or an airport. Well, almost...
Lev Grossman's Magician Trilogy did the trick (pun intended) for me this year.
The first book, The Magicians: A Novel (Magicians Trilogy)
introduces us to Quentin Coldwater and his friends, whose adventures continue throughout the series.The series is a cross between Harry Potter (there is a magic school), the Chronicles of Narnia (there is a magic land that awaits two human kings and two human queens) and a Donna Tart novel (lots of adolescent angst sex, drugs and drinking.) Imagine Harry, Ron, Herione, Peter, Susan, Lucy and Edgar in college with lots of drugs and booze, tats and attitude. And magic.
However the magic itself is wildly imaginative and goes incredible places. Some extraordinary, some dark, and some just random in a very millennial kind of way.
The second book The Magician King: A Novel (Magicians Trilogy)
was such a Catcher-in-the-Rye parade of angry attitude that it got a little tiresome, but it was worth sticking it out through the third book The Magician's Land: A Novel (Magicians Trilogy),because it is not just great story telling, but a radical act of imagination.If you like coming of age fiction you will love this. If you like fantasy you will love this. And even if you just like first class writing about serious ideas you will love this. The series got me through Cleveland Hopkins, Newark, Munich, Tel Aviv and the initial sleepless nights of jetlag!
And in the interest of transparency, if you click on the links, you can buy the books directly from Amazon under my affiliate number. And I will know someone reads my recommendations!
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