The 2014 Hattie Awards!!! Or the Best Book of 2014 (That I've Read)

2014 was a busy year for me with lots of challenges at work and plenty of travel. Even though this blog was dormant nearly all of the year it was probably still one of my highest word count years when counting all of the reread posts done for Tor.com on The Way of Kings, a project I was proud to be part of and glad to have behind me. As many others out there know: Writing on a schedule is hard work, especially when you have other work to do.

I still managed to read quite a bit this year even though my overall numbers are still down. I miss reading 100+ books a year, but appreciate all the added time I spent with friends and family this year. Looking over my reading log I've read 81 stories though many this year are novellas and graphic novels. I've not counted most short stories unless I bought them for my Nook and there were only 2 or 3 like that, but the novella and novelette length really hit me hard this year with a dozen or so of those. There was just one anthology read being the all-star Dangerous Women. Here's how the numbers breakdown:

Graphic Novels: 12 (though I read many more and only list those I thought worth remembering)
Short Fiction (novellas, novelettes, short stories, etc.): 24ish (Not counting Dangerous Women)
Novels: 45

Now on to the Hattie Awards!

Best Fantasy

 Winner - City of Stairs by Robert Jackson Bennett

Runner-up - Smiler's Fair by Rebecca Levine

Honorable Hat Tips -The Mirror Empire by Kameron Hurley, The Magician's Land by Lev Grossman, and Words of Radiance by Brandon Sanderson

Bennett's latest stole the show as far as I am concerned though Smiler's Fair took me by surprise. Sanderson's WoR was what I hope it would be, but only time will tell if it will all payoff. My money's on yes. The Mirror Empire leveled up Hurley's game though there was some shakiness in the first quarter. I think Hurley's best is still to come in this series since some beautiful ground work has be laid.

Best Science Fiction

Winner - The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August by Claire North

Runner-up: The Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu (Translated by Ken Liu)

Honorable Hat Tips - Lock In by John Scalzi, Ascension by Jacqueline Koyanagi, and Red Rising by Pierce Brown, On A Red Station Drifting by Aliette de Bodard

Some will be surprised Andy Weir's The Martian isn't on this list somewhere. That's because I read it in 2013 with it winning in one category.  But North's story has stuck with me a long time and never wavered from being my favorite in this area though it is probably better labeled Science Fantasy it merits a top spot. The Three-Body Problem left me cold for the first half of the story to the point I almost put it down, but I'm glad I stuck with it as it is one of the most unique First Contact stories I've ever encountered. Lock-In is probably Scalzi's best novel since Android's Dream and I friggin loved AD. Koyanagi's Ascension hit me right in the Firefly spot while bringing a unique cast that I was just as quick to fall for. Red Rising is the real please-me-deal in the same way Ender's Game was only more brutal. de Bodard's novella lives up to the accolades to date and I look forward to delving into more into this universe.

Best Weird/Horror

Winner - The Girl With All the Gifts by M.R. Carey aka Mike Carey

Runner-up - Datura by Leena Krohn

Honorable Hat Tips - Truth and Fear by Peter Higgins, The Strange Library by Haruki Murakami, Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer, and The End of the Sentence by Maria Dahvana Headley and Kat Howard

Datura is the stuff that eerie nightmares are made of. I know because it kept giving them to me. Truth and Fear feels very middle-bookish, but the writing has a stark beauty and strangeness that captivated me. I'm still trying to wrap my head about Murakami's odd little novella. The design by Chip Kidd was worth the price of admission all on it own. The End of the Sentence gave us a dark a slightly creepy American fairy tale well worth checking out.

Best Finish to a Series

Winner - The Magician's Land by Lev Grossman
Runner-up - Shadow Ops: Breach Zone by Myke Cole

Grossman left me amazed throughout his Magician's series and he was able to close it out quite poignantly. It will be a series well worth re-reading. Cole's finish to the first Shadow Ops arc executed all the goals I had for the series with big screen action on a small page.

Best Urban Fantasy

Winner -  California Bones by Greg van Eekhout

Runner-up - New Watch by Sergei Lukyanenko 

Honorable Hat Tips - Skin Game by Jim Butcher, and Falling Sky by Rajan Khanna

van Eekhout is back in UF after a 5 year absence with a new series that re-imagines California as if ruled by powerful magicians who eat other magicians. Not nearly as dark as it sounds since van Eekhout plays to the lighter side of things more times than not and plays up the thief angle quite well. Who knew Lukyanenko wasn't done with the Night Watch series? At first I thought this was going to stretch a series too fair as the fourth book really did close most threads off well, but the author managed to dig up a story that is as good as the rest.

Best Other

Winner - Tigerman by Nick Harkaway

I wasn't sure where to put Harkaway's latest, but I knew it needed to be mentioned. The story involves a a superhero of sorts, an island scheduled for demolition, and a bevy of most likely disreputable men. Though it meanders as Harkaway works tend to do that's the joy of the story. And that twist at the end! OMG, Harkaway is truly l33t.

Best Overall Book of the Year - You guys have got to read this!

City of Stairs by Robert Jackson Bennett

Considering Bennett nabbed this spot in 2012 for The Troupe this shouldn't come as too much of a shock. Now who do I have to talk to about the sequel City of Blades getting in my hands ASAP? Don't make me send Sigrud... The Girl With All the Gifts and The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August have also stuck with me. These three books are also the ones I keep giving or recommending to friends depending on how their tastes bend.

Best Books Published before 2014 (That I read this year)

This year a third of the novels I read were not necessarily published this year. It is hard to rank them so here are a few of my favorites: Foundation by Isaac Asimov (re-read and deservedly in print for more than sixty years), American Elsewhere by Robert Jackson Bennett (Bennett has to be the love child of Bradbury. Has to be!), Late Eclipses by Seanan McGuire (Toby just stole my heart from Dresden), The Lives of Tao by Wesley Chu (Action/Adventure with Aliens FTW), and The Blue Blazes by Chuck Wendig (Badass/drugs are bad/also blue apparently).

So what were some of your favorites this year?

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Best Books of 2009 (That I've read)

Cover Unveiled for Dangerous Women edited by George R.R. Martin & Gardiner Dozois

Above is the cover for what to me is the most anticipated super-anthology of the year, Dangerous Women. I've already mentioned all the contributors, but seeing many of them listed there does give me goosebumps. Especially knowing how many of these will connect to the novel worlds of many of the writers. While I do like the general look, it looks a bit just too that--general, but then again so was Warrirors which this is a companion volume to. Maybe Tor was concerned with ending up with a chain mail bikini girl so they went safe. Still I would have thought this would have been a good opportunity to show a strong, dangerous woman on a Fantasy cover with out the awkward poses or unrealistic accouterments. Dangerous Women will be out in early December. Get your Christmas lists ready.

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NEWS | Dangerous Women edited by George R.R. Martin and Gardner Dozois gets a release date

News broke about George R.R. Martin and Gardner Dozois' next big anthology quite sometime ago, but a release date hadn't been set until just now. Dangerous Women will be released December of 2013, which should be just in time for Christmas. And what's better than original stories by Joe Abercrombie, Lev Grossman, and Brandon Sanderson to close out the the year? Well, only if we got a new Martin A Song of Ice and Fire story, which we do. It will cover the Targaryen civil war which has been mentioned a lot in the novels and Dunk & Egg stories, but little detail has been revealed. But don't confuse this with the Dunk & Egg stories as it takes place well before Egg was born. Here's part of Martin's announcement from a few months back that goes into more detail on some of the stories:

The Abercrombie is set against his RED COUNTRY backdrop, the Holland gives us Eleanor of Aquitaine, Jim Butcher returns us to Harry Dresden’s world, Lev Grossman contributes a tale of life at Brakebills, Steve Stirling revisits his Emberverse, Diana Gabaldon’s story features Jamie Fraser of OUTLANDER fame, the Spector is a Wild Cards story featuring Hoodoo Mama and the Amazing Bubbles, and mine own contribution… well, it’s some of that fake history I have been writing lo these many months, the true (mostly) story of the origins of the Dance of the Dragons. The stand-alone stories, not part of any series, feature some amazing work as well. For those who like to lose themselves in long stories, the Brandon Sanderson story, the Diana Gabaldon story, the Caroline Spector story, and my “Princess and Queen” are novellas. Huge mothers.

Here’s the table of contents…

• “Some Desperado” by Joe Abercrombie
• “My Heart Is Either Broken” by Megan Abbott
• “Nora’s Song” by Cecelia Holland
• “The Hands That Are Not There” by Melinda Snodgrass
• “Bombshells” by Jim Butcher
• “Raisa Stepanova” by Carrie Vaughn
• “Wrestling Jesus” by Joe R. Lansdale
• “Neighbors” by Megan Lindholm
• “I Know How To Pick ‘em” by Lawrence Block
• “Shadows For Silence In The Forests Of Hell” by Brandon Sanderson
• “A Queen In Exile” by Sharon Kay Penman
• “The Girl In The Mirror” by Lev Grossman
• “Second Arabesque, Very Slowly” by Nancy Kress
• “City Lazarus” by Diana Rowland
• “Virgins” by Diana Gabaldon
• “Hell Hath No Fury” by Sherilynn Kenyon
• “Pronouncing Doom” by S.M. Stirling
• “Name The Beast” by Sam Sykes
• “Caretakers” by Pat Cadigan
• “Lies My Mother Told Me” by Caroline Spector
• “The Princess And The Queen” by George R.R. Martin

December can't get here soon enough.

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NEWS | Third Magician book from Lev Grossman

In most interviews around the release of The Magician King, Grossman said he didn't know what he was going to write next and that he would be taking a little time off from writing.  But it appears inspiration has struck and we'll be treated to at least one more Magician's book featuring some past characters.  Here is what from Grossman said in his Brakebills Alumni Newsletter:

I also started writing the third Magicians novel. I’m not sure what to tell you about it.

Mostly I’m just outlining it now, and taking a lot of notes. Inspiration is coming from a lot of different places, some new, some old. The Magician’s Nephew is a big part of it, as is The Last Battle. (It’s not a coincidence that those books tell the story, respectively, of the beginning of Narnia and the end of Narnia.) I’m rereading The Tempest and The Phantom Tollbooth and P.G. Wodehouse and the great Bond novel Casino Royale. I’m also rereading The Lord of the Rings, which oddly enough I’ve never really thought of as an influence before.

The new book’s working title – which I’ve never told anybody before -- is The Magician’s Land.

It’s not like anything I’ve ever written before. But it’s not completely new either. There are a lot of old friends to visit, and a lot of loose ends to tie up. We may never come back here again.

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NEWS | The Magicians Optioned for TV and a new Sanderson Novella

According to Deadline.com Fox has optioned Lev Grossman's The Magicians for a TV series.  The co-writers on the project are Ashley Miller and Zack Stentz who previously worked on the Fox series Terminator: The Sarah Conner Chronicles as well as writers on many comic book movies including X-Men: First Class and Thor.  Given The Magicians edginess and modern setting this could be a good fit for Fox, but I'll be curious how they handle the sexual aspects of the story. Plus special effects will only increase as the story goes on when the more fantastical elements kick-in.  I see the first season being mostly set at Brakebills with the season finale leading to the other world part of the story for season two.  As of right now the series is not green-lighted, but a pilot script is in the works and according to io9 Fox's contract has a penalty, which usually implies they'll at least film the pilot.

This week Brandon Sanderson released a surprised e-only novella called Infinity Blade: Awakening, which is also his first tie-in fiction. Infinity Blade is a video game that is one of the best-selling games on the iPad. I've played it quite a bit and though it is repetitive it does have gorgeous graphics and an interesting story line to start.  Sanderson's novella is supposed to bridge the first game and the sequel that will be coming out later this year. Sanderson wrote a long blog explain the reasons he agreed to the project:

This story was just plain FUN to write. I had a blast with it, and it turned out quite well. I got to play with the idea of blending entertainment media—the story is for sale in-game, and together with the game, blends storytelling with gameplay. I think our world is going to change in interesting ways as books, video games, and cinema meld together.

So, this story hit a sweet spot for me. I got creative freedom, the ability to work with fun people, a chance to work with some interesting limitations, a chance to dip my toes into video games (they also let me do a draft on the script for the second game), and a chance to play with transmedia.

...this story is intended to be accessible to all—but that said, it does rely a lot on things that happened in the first game while throwing balls up into the air for the second game to catch. (That was part of the challenge.) Much like THE ALLOY OF LAW, it is not intended to be the end-all of my career, but rather is me exploring new types of writing and trying to have fun along the way.

Also, Sanderson is amping up his short story output saying:

You'll see me releasing a handful of short fiction pieces over the next year. I've got some in anthologies, others I'm preparing to do directly as electronic downloads, and then a few other very special pieces.

So it looks like we'll be plenty more of Sanderson to tide us over between his Epic-sized novels.

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Cover Unveiled for The Magician King by Lev Grossman (UK version)

Feast your eyes.  Now that is quite something.  Much better than the very boring UK cover for The Magicians, especially given the spectacular cover it received in the US.  Given this cover I'd love to see Grossman's UK publisher redo The Magicians in a similar style with buttons as a design element.  If you missed it the US cover for The Magician King is has been released as well.  Is it August yet so I can read this already?  I might be in luck though as Grossman will be doing a signing at Book Expo America this year in late May for The Magician King.

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Cover Unveiled for The Magician King by Lev Grossman

The Magicians was one of the most surprising Fantasy novels of 2009 and given what Grossman started with The Magician King is now an immediate read when I get my grubby hands on it. The cover art just unveiled by Grossman is again done by Didier Massard, who has the very usually technique of building his imagery and than photographing it. He usually ends up with a very surreal looking image that does feel remarkably like what Grossman is going for.  Although in this case I'm not in love with the imagery as much as the art from The Magicians I can see this growing on me.  It looks like that semi-official release date of August 9th is pretty official at this point, which now can't get here soon enough. Again here is the blurb:

Hailed as a “painfully perceptive novel of the fantastic that brings to mind both Jay McInerney and J. K. Rowling,”* The Magicians was praised as a triumph by readers and critics of both mainstream and fantasy literature. Now Grossman takes us back to Fillory, where the Brakebills graduates have fled the sorrows of the mundane world, only to face terrifying new challenges.

Quentin and his friends are now the kings and queens of Fillory, but the days and nights of royal luxury are starting to pall. After a morning hunt takes a sinister turn, Quentin and his old friend Julia charter a magical sailing ship and set out on an errand to the wild outer reaches of their kingdom. Their pleasure cruise becomes an adventure when the two are unceremoniously dumped back into the last place Quentin ever wants to see: his parent’s house in Chesterton, Massachusetts. And only the black, twisted magic that Julia learned on the streets can save them.

The Magician King is a grand voyage into the dark, glittering heart of magic, an epic quest for the Harry Potter generation. It also introduces a powerful new voice, that of Julia, whose angry genius is thrilling. Once again Grossman proves that he is the modern heir to C.S. Lewis, and the cutting edge of literary fantasy.

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MISHMASH | Lev Grossman & Cherie Priest Sequel News, & Tregillis Free Fiction

It is that time of year when lots of dates are slowly released for Fall books with the first being a late summer release I've been looking for info on nearly weekly.  Lev Grossman's hotly anticipated sequel to The Magicians titled The Magician King has a semi official publication date of August 9th.  After the way Grossman turned Fantasy on its ear with The Magicians this is at the top of my summer read list. Here is the blurb for The Magician King.

Hailed as a “painfully perceptive novel of the fantastic that brings to mind both Jay McInerney and J. K. Rowling,”* The Magicians was praised as a triumph by readers and critics of both mainstream and fantasy literature. Now Grossman takes us back to Fillory, where the Brakebills graduates have fled the sorrows of the mundane world, only to face terrifying new challenges.

Quentin and his friends are now the kings and queens of Fillory, but the days and nights of royal luxury are starting to pall. After a morning hunt takes a sinister turn, Quentin and his old friend Julia charter a magical sailing ship and set out on an errand to the wild outer reaches of their kingdom. Their pleasure cruise becomes an adventure when the two are unceremoniously dumped back into the last place Quentin ever wants to see: his parent’s house in Chesterton, Massachusetts. And only the black, twisted magic that Julia learned on the streets can save them.

The Magician King is a grand voyage into the dark, glittering heart of magic, an epic quest for the Harry Potter generation. It also introduces a powerful new voice, that of Julia, whose angry genius is thrilling. Once again Grossman proves that he is the modern heir to C.S. Lewis, and the cutting edge of literary fantasy.

Ian Tregillis has posted two free short stories to his site. The first is called "Chronicle of Sorrows" is placed in the world of the Milkweed Triptych and specifically connected to the event so of "What Doctor Gottlieb Saw" that was released last summer. The other is a standalone called "Come Dancefight, My Beloved Enemy." If you haven't had a chance to check out Ian's debut Bitter Seeds than his short fiction is well worth your time.

Cherie Priest's third full length Clockwork Century novel Ganymede will be out September 27th. This time around we get to explore New Orleans with Andan Cly!

The air pirate Andan Cly is going straight. Well, straighter. Although he’s happy to run alcohol and guns wherever the money’s good, he’s not sure the world needs more sap, or its increasingly ugly side effects. But reforming is easier said than done: the captain’s first legal gig will be paid for by sap money, because the Seattle Underground is in dire need of supplies.

New Orleans is not Cly’s first pick for a shopping run. He loved the Big Easy once, back when he likewise loved a beautiful mixed-race prostitute named Josephine Early, but that was a decade ago. He’s still on Jo’s mind, he learns when she sends him a telegram about a peculiar piloting job. It’s a chance to complete two lucrative jobs at once. He sends his old paramour a note and heads for New Orleansl, with no idea of what he’s in for—or what she wants him to fly.

But he won’t be flying. Not exactly. Hidden at the bottom of Lake Pontchartrain lurks an astonishing war machine, an immense submersible called the Ganymede. This prototype could end the war, if only anyone had the faintest idea of how to operate it….if only they could sneak it past the Southern forces at the mouth of the Mississippi River….if only it hadn’t killed most of the men who’d ever set foot inside it.

Now the only question is whether Cly and his crew will end up in the history books, or at the bottom of the ocean.

Lastly, but certainly not least, do check out Genre For Japan, which is a series of auctions for various books, signed artwork, comics, and plenty of other surprises from many different publishers. The auctions are do to go live by the 28th of March and they are still accepting donations.

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NEWS | Sequel to Lev Grossman's The Magicians signed

During my interview with Lev Grossman last year he hinted at a sequel to The Magicians, which now has a title: The Magician King. This is very exciting news for those of us who enjoyed The Magicians and for the other possibilities Grossman left open to explore.  Here is the announcement from Publisher's Weekly:

Tina Bennett at Janklow and Nesbit has closed on a sequel to Lev Grossman’s The Magicians. 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.”

The Magician King is slated for a Fall 2011 release on Viking's schedule. Mark this as my first Looking Forward Fantasy of 2011.


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AUTHOR INTERVIEW | Lev Grossman author of The Magicians

I am very pleased to have Lev Grossman with us today as his first foray into Fantasy The Magicians was just released August 11th. I thoroughly enjoyed The Magicians and you can check out my full review here. Grossman is a graduate of Harvard and attended Yale for Comparative Literature, which means he is a very learned man in the way of words.

MH: Hello Mr. Grossman, welcome to Mad Hatter’s Bookshelf. Thank you for taking time to answer our questions. Firstly, can you tell us a little about yourself?

LG: Hi! Thanks for having me here. Well, I’m 40, I live in Brooklyn, I work at Time magazine as their book critic. And I wrote a novel called The Magicians.

MH: For those who haven’t read The Magicians, what would you say perspective readers to whet their appetite?
LG: The Magicians is a grown-up take on young adult fantasies like The Chronicles of Narnia and Harry Potter. If you love those books, but ever wondered it would be like if they were a little less cozy, and a little realer and more grown up, that’s The Magicians. Or as near as I could get to that.

MH: What did you want to accomplish with The Magicians? What themes were you exploring and do you think you succeeded? The idea of consequences seems to be central.


LG: Consequences, yes. I didn’t start writing The Magicians with any ambitions in mind other than this vague notion that I wanted to tell a story, something in the vein of Narnia or Harry Potter, but written for grownups. If such a thing is possible. (I was fresh off reading JONATHAN STRANGE & MR. NORRELL, by Susanna Clarke, and therefore believed that anything was possible.) But I think what I also wanted to do was understand what fantasy means to me, and why I have always, deep down, wanted to actually go to Narnia, and/or Hogwarts. And I wanted to think seriously about what would happen if I got what I wanted.


MH: What fantasy books have left you in awe? Which writers have influenced your work the most?


LG: Lewis and Rowling, obviously. T.H. White -- underrated to this day. Fritz Leiber. Anne McAffrey. Ursula Le Guin. George R.R. Martin. Susanna Clarke. Kelly Link. And I want to put in a plug for the small, little-discussed fantasy oeuvre of Larry Niven, who’s better known as a hard SF writer, but who achieved amazing things in a handful of short stories and a novella set in the Warlock universe. I thought about his work a lot -- the rigorous, no-nonsense, hard-SF mindset he brought to writing fantasy -- when I was writing The Magicians. Warlock fans will spot a blatant homage to Niven about halfway through...


MH: Have you always wanted to be an author?


LG: Up until college, all I wanted to do was get into college. Once I got there, all I wanted to do was be a writer.


MH: Have you ever written a full-length work that you haven’t published?


LG: No. Though my first novel, Warp, much as I love it, is borderline juvenilia and arguably shouldn’t have been published at all. Fortunately nobody noticed it anyway.


MH: How do your stories take shape? Are you a detailed outliner or more streams of consciousness?


LG: The technique I’ve hit on that works best for me is to do a very detailed outline, then start writing, then watch as that outline crashes and burns halfway through. As the saying goes, a plan rarely survives contact with the enemy, the enemy in this case being the empty page. After that happens, something much more interesting tends to rise from the ashes.


MH: The US and UK covers are drastically different. Are you happy with the covers you’ve been given and how important do you think they are to a books’ success? It definitely seems as though your US publisher wanted to stay away from the typical fantasy look.


LG: It’s funny you should say that. None of the covers look anything like what I imagined for the book. (True fact: most authors don’t get to choose their book covers, unless they’re Stephen King.) But I love the US cover immoderately. I think the publisher’s thinking there was not to go for traditional fantasy, but to try to come up with something vaguely fantastical that could appeal to both fantasy and mainstream readers. I’m obsessed with that image, which is called ‘Autumn Tree,’ and was created by an extraordinary French artist named Didier Massard, who actually built that landscape in his studio as a model, then photographed it, then messed around with the photograph. I tried to buy the original, but it turns out it costs $20,000.I had hoped that the UK publisher would go for a more straightforward fantasy cover, but they wanted something that looked more like my last novel, Codex, which was more of a thriller, because Codex did well for them. But I worry about whether it will reach fantasy fans.

MH: In another interview you mention you will be continuing The Magicians as a series. Can you tell us a little about what is in store and when the next volume might be released? 

LG: There will be a sequel. It won’t pick up directly after the end of The Magicians, but some years later. That’s all I can say for now, because it’s all I know. I hope to finish a manuscript sometime next spring. 

MH: In the next volume will you reveal more about the nexus that connects the different worlds and maybe what Penny has been up to?

LG: I’ll be very surprised if we’ve seen the last of Penny. Though maybe we've seen the last of him in his present form.


MH: Your twin brother Austin is the author of Soon I Will Be Invincible. Have you ever felt competitive with your brother? And which of you is the better looking twin?


LG: Yes, and yes. Austin and I have a very complicated and (to me, anyway) productive relationship as writers. Invincible, which I read in manuscript, was a major influence on The Magicians. In fact it caused me to scrap another, more conventional book that I’d been working on for two years. I would like to think the influence runs both ways. But I can only vouch for my end.


MH: If you could be any character from The Magicians who would it be and why?


LG: It’s difficult. I tried so hard to give them all equal measures of happiness and unhappiness. Checks and balances. Anaïs is probably the happiest of all of them, but her personality has certain … deficits. Janet is the one I identify with most, personally. But all things considered I’d probably be Eliot. He’s a very gifted spellcaster. And he has nice shirts.


MH: What are 2 things about you most people don’t know? Do you have a pet monkey you keep sequestered in the backyard?


LG: Most people don’t know I have an identical twin. But that’s out of the bag in this interview. There’s no monkey in the backyard. (I live in Brooklyn. We don’t have a backyard.) Let’s see. I really am very boring. I used to be a serious amateur cellist, which is something cellists tend to spot when they read The Magicians. There are some broad hints in the book --- all those painful hand positions. Oh, and one time I met JK Rowling. I can sometimes be made to tell the story of how that happened, but only after lots of alcohol. And even then it's not as good a story as it sounds. (A better story is how my mother met CS Lewis, when she was an undergraduate at Oxford.)


MH: Is there anything else you’d like to say?


LG: I feel like I’ve said too much already.


MH: Thank you for your time. I look forward to the next volume. You can explore Fillory here: http://www.emberstomb.com/ Read excerpts from author Christopher Plover's Fillory series here: http://www.christopherplover.com/ Explore Brakebills College for Magical Pedagogy's: http://www.brakebills.com/ And there is also http://www.themagiciansbook.com/

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REVIEW | The Magicians by Lev Grossman
Cover Unveiled for The Magician King by Lev Grossman (UK version)

More info on The Magicians by Lev Grossman

Grasping for the Wind has got a link to an excerpt from The World in the Walls, the novel (Quentin Coldwater is infatuated with) from the novel, The Magicians recently reviewed here. I was also altered to a bunch of sites related to the book and its related world:

• You can explore Fillory here: www.emberstomb.com
• Read excerpts from author Christopher Plover's Fillory series here: www.christopherplover.com
• Explore Brakebills College for Magical Pedagogy's: www.brakebills.com
• And there is also www.themagiciansbook.com

See my review of The Magicians here.

REVIEW | The Magicians by Lev Grossman (Viking)

I picked The Magicians up on my trip to BEA this year. I hadn't heard anything about it previously, but that is what BEA is supposed to be about. To find those gems you might not otherwise have come upon and The Magician is one of those gems. The Magicians is a pastiche of The Once and Future King, The Chronicles of Narnia along with the Harry Potter novels only aimed at adults. I read Lev Grossman's Codex a couple years ago and was severely underwhelmed so when I started The Magicians the bar was set fairly low. Having said that it is a truly magical and entertaining read, but make no mistakes this is not a book for children. Instead of very young people learning magic or getting involved in fanciful worlds his characters are college aged and in most cases very flawed. The Magicians deals with what people have to go through in order to learn magic properly and the consequences of getting involved with this world. What if you could do anything you wanted? Or go anywhere? What would you life mean? Those are the questions Grossman posits as you journey with Quentin Coldwater on his quest to become a magician and his obsession with Fillory and Further, a thinly veiled Narnia series he is infatuated with. There are sexual indiscretions and many morally questionable situations as the character make their way through the world. There is a good amount of action although most takes place in the last 1/4 of the book. Yet the book flows easily as I kept wanting to know what was next. The story starts with Quentin getting invited to take an entrance exam to a magic school very mysteriously. Brakebills, is a very exclusive school for people who show a high aptitude for magic. This isn't hogwarts. The description of the way the students are taught is more reminiscent of Law School than anything else as most of the work is reading, rote memorization, and repetition of magical exercises. My biggest issue with the book is most of the characters do not develop much as they go along and are a bit dry with personality. One of the most interesting characters, Penny, is missing from a large chunk of the book as if the author forgot about him for 200 pages. However, Penny's disappearance is somewhat haphazardly explained. Once Quentin and his friends graduate from Brakebills and are forced into the real world it is very clear they have no place in it.

Eventually Quentin and his friends journey into a world very similar to Narnia, which is a bit too much on the nose for me at times, but it does have its place as all the pieces do fall into place well. They encounter many magical and mythological creatures. A bit more background on the Fillory world would have been nice, but it does get filled in a bit towards the end. A couple of the major treads were a bit predictable, such as the revelation of a missing character from the Fillory series and another related character. Yet these flaws do not take away from the enjoyable reading experience. The ending is fitting and leaves the character open for a succeeding adventure, but gives you closure on pretty much everything. Quentin's final transformation is actually quite interesting and I'm eager to see what other worlds Grossman has in store for him. I give The Magicians 8.5 out of 10 Hats. Grossman has grown quite a bit as a fiction writer and it shows. The core audience for The Magicians is probably people who rarely read fantasy or those who want to reminisce a bit about the books they read growing up. Those who are very well read in the fantasy genre may consider the concepts a bit over done, but Grossman does manage to stand apart and create a world where actions have very definitive repercussions.

• You can explore Fillory here: www.emberstomb.com
• Read excerpts from author Christopher Plover's Fillory series here: www.christopherplover.com
• Explore Brakebills College for Magical Pedagogy's: www.brakebills.com
• And there is also www.themagiciansbook.com

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