magician king trois

According to an earlier blog post, the first time I read The Magician King (book 2) I was a little disappointed when I compared it to The Magicians (book 1). Where the first book was vibrant and new, the second was a combination of catching up with a character--Julia, who had fallen off the page in the first book, and was now back--and following Quentin through the next stage of his life. Quentin is on a quest to save the world, or something just as critical, but he wasn't exactly sure what his task was until he neared the end. and neither were we

Quentin and Julia both grew as people in this book, and while it wasn’t as exciting as the first book, it was entertaining. I was also interested to read (in the earlier blog entry) that I suspected, but wasn’t yet sure, that there would be a third book.

The second time a read book 2 was just after book 3 came out and I may have rushed thru it. At that point, I still saw it as a 'middle book' of a trilogy, in the ways I’ve described that about other books in the past. This time through (the third time) I didn’t feel that; this time The Magician King read as a stand alone and moved the characters and overall storyline forward in a way that was hard to see without the benefit of the foreknowledge of book three that I now have.

Julia’s life, and story of the keys (Quentin's quest) read like a well formed adventure of its own, similar in to the individual books in The Chronicles of Narnia, which is one of the obvious inspirations for this series.

Read this book. yay, you got a promotion! who's a good book?