Waiting on Wednesday – The Magician’s Land

Waiting on Wednesday is a meme hosted by Breaking the Spine.  It gives an opportunity to share our excitement for upcoming releases (share the love and anticipation for those books we can’t wait to read).

The Magician’s by Lev Grossman is definitely a marmite book, and one that I feel clearly on the the LOVE LOVE LOVE side of. I think some readers weren’t expecting the darkness in it. I quite often hear it referred to as Harry Potter meets Narnia, but in college. I think maybe you could throw in a bit of Catcher in the Rye as well. I still really enjoyed The Magician King, but not quite as much as the first. That seems to happen with middle books sometimes and I can’t wait to read the final installment and see what is in store for Quentin and crew.

The Magician’s Land by Lev Grossman

Expected Publication:  August 5, 2014 by Penguin Group

The stunning conclusion to the New York Times bestselling Magicians trilogy
 
Quentin Coldwater has lost everything. He has been cast out of Fillory, the secret magical land of his childhood dreams that he once ruled. Everything he had fought so hard for, not to mention his closest friends, is sealed away in a land Quentin may never again visit. 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. Meanwhile, the magical barriers that keep Fillory safe are failing, and barbarians from the north have invaded. Eliot and Janet, the rulers of Fillory, embark on a final quest to save their beloved world, only to discover a situation far more complex—and far more dire—than anyone had envisioned.

Along with Plum, a brilliant young magician with a dark secret of her own, Quentin sets out on a crooked path through a magical demimonde of gray magic and desperate characters. His new life takes him back to old haunts, like Antarctica and the Neitherlands, and old friends he thought were lost forever. He uncovers buried secrets and hidden evils and ultimately the key to a sorcerous masterwork, a spell that could create a magical utopia. But all roads lead back to Fillory, where Quentin must face his fears and put things right or die trying.
 
The Magician’s Land is an intricate and fantastical thriller, 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.