BookSeries· 2009· Fantasy

The Magicians

by Lev Grossman

The Magicians: it draws on 1 recorded source.

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What influenced The Magicians

The works this one is recorded as drawing on.

The Chronicles Of Narnia

Book · 1950

InfluenceHIGH
  • Fillory - Narnia: The fictional magical land of Fillory in Grossman's universe is an explicit stand-in for Narnia. Like Narnia, Fillory was created by two animal gods (Ember and Umber, playing the role of Aslan) and is accessed by British siblings (the Chatwins, parallel to the Pevensies) who travel there from Earth through everyday portals (like a grandfather clock rather than a wardrobe).
  • The "Neitherlands": In The Magicians, the hub world connecting different dimensions via pools of water is a direct nod to the Wood Between the Worlds from C.S. Lewis’s The Magician's Nephew.
  • Tackling Morality and Trauma: Where Lewis used Narnia as a Christian allegory where good and evil are clear, Grossman reframes portal fantasy to examine clinical depression, addiction, sexual trauma, and the sobering reality that magic doesn't automatically fix internal human unhappiness.
  • From the author:
  • "My work on these books really began when I was 8 and I picked up The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. I've always been deeply drawn to Lewis's work... I wrote the first draft of* The Magicians, and they went to Narnia, so it used to be much more directly an engagement with Narnia. I don't think of it as an homage or a critique; maybe it's both, I don't know. I always wanted to talk back to C.S. Lewis."*

About the work

The Magicians

This is a series.

A thrilling and original coming-of- age novel about a young man practicing magic in the real worldQuentin Coldwater is brilliant but miserable. A senior in high school, he’s still secretly preoccupied with a series of fantasy novels he read as a child, set in a magical land called Fillory. Imagine his surprise when he finds himself unexpectedly admitted to a very secret, very exclusive college of magic in upstate New York, where he receives a thorough and rigorous education in the craft of modern sorcery.He also discovers all the other things people learn in college: friendship, love, sex, booze, and boredom. Something is missing, though. Magic doesn’t bring Quentin the happiness and adventure he dreamed it would. After graduation he and his friends make a stunning discovery: Fillory is real. But the land of Quentin’s fantasies turns out to be much darker and more dangerous than he could have imagined. His childhood dream becomes a nightmare with a shocking truth at its heart.At once psychologically piercing and magnificently absorbing, The Magicians boldly moves into uncharted literary territory, imagining magic as practiced by real people, with their capricious desires and volatile emotions. Lev Grossman creates an utterly original world in which good and evil aren’t black and white, love and sex aren’t simple or innocent, and power comes at a terrible price.

Everything in The Magicians