Do you know this feeling when there is something very good in one’s writing, and yet you despise it because of some toxic or highly disagreeable content? Or when you disagree strongly with an author but you love his/her books anyway? The latter apply to me and Marquez, Undset and Dostoevsky. I mean, in Marquez’s books there are terrible things about rape and harassment which NOBODY should ever take seriously. Undset was a devoted Catholic, Dostoevsky was very conservative — I’m neither. And yet, these authors had something beyond alarming ideas or the worldview I’m not up to. They raised important questions. They created believable characters. They had their original styles.Why am I evoking such famous names here? Because the trilogy of Lev Grossman is terribly elitist. And because it’s the former case. I cannot appreciate his writing forgetting all its flaws and alarming content.

White People’s Problems So Much

I’ve heard such an opinion about The Magicians on Goodreads, and to my mind, it’s quite true. I mean, all the main characters —Julia, Quentin, Alice and Jane —are super-intelligent students from wealthy white families. The only exception is Eliot, whose father is a Stereotypical Farmer from Middle-West despising his son for his homosexuality. Any characters of colour are on the faaar backstage, one of them being comparised even to a monkey(!). The same is with the poors — they are not the concern, or they are only mentioned in a very stereotypical way. The only non-heteronormative characters are gays. One of them, Eliot, likes fancy clothes and doesn’t seek love, only pleasure and entertainment. Another one, an episodic character from the magical school of Brakebills, loves fine wine and elegant pencils. Stereotypes soooo much. And the worst is that Eliot, let’s say, is a believable and likeable character to me. At least, he came to love the land of Fillory truly, beyond the fun of excited teens having their own enchanted realm to rule and play as unrestrained feudal rulers. But when we come to his sexuality, all the stereotypes of a Fancy Heartless Gay attack.
The whole plotline appeals to the certain kind of people altogether. Elitist white kids end in an elitist college for mages. After graduation, they play around in NYC among sex&drugs till they find the Neitherlands (Lewis vibes so much) leading to the endless realities. Among them, there is Narnia Fillory, a land described to a writer Christopher Plover by the English siblings of Chatwin family. One of the kids, frustrated and bored (oh wait, they are all like that) Quentin, loved Fillory series as a child. And, oh, Plover was another gay. A paedophile, of course.It’s all so predictable, after a fashion; even the things which are meant to be subversive could be predicted if one knows the rules of retelling. And, above all, the problems which are raised are mostly the problems of the millennial kids from upper-middle class. Today, the issues of the young people are completely different. We have less sex while Quentin&Co are cheating on each other and hooking up harpies. We are concerned with the climate changes while Quentin&Co are concerned with having the time of their life and making easy money with their magic. One may say that it would work like that if the people were given magical powers. But still, the vision of young magicians bored with their skills isn’t the darkest or the most probable one. Were I a magician, I would steal all the books I want. I would bring Thorin/Ross Poldark/my beloved Simon!1!1 to life. I would make a revolution. Really, you can do so many dangerous and bold things with magic. But in The Magicians, magic is mainly to make easy money and wild parties. The next books will change it a bit, but still, there is a problem.The books are about bored millennials. They don’t show the problems of the teens today, of the people of colour, of the poors, of the immigrants, of disabled people. They are a good, convincing portrait of a sub-group in the particular generation. But, somehow, this is the story of the kids with the easiest start, with good schools and wealthy parents. I’m not saying that studying isn’t hard, but the true is that Quentin&Co. (maybe except for Eliot) had already better chances than poorer and less white kids. And the elitism of the books is just boring and discriminating. Brakebills is for the best ones. The wizards are more intelligent than the other people. SPOILER Julia, a self-made magician, joins literally geniuses. SPOILER As the result, a reader feels like an unworthy idiot. Thank you very much, Grossman.On the other hand, there are three things I admire after a fashion. At first, Grossman is sincere enough. Unlike Hobb or Eddings, he doesn’t make the guise of Commonfolk Concern. At second, his descriptions of boredom, of suddenly changing moods, of unfulfillment, of transitory and evanescent happiness, are very believable. I experienced myself such moods, such a sentiment towards the “better days” and the childhood.At third, the trilogy is quite well-written just as a literary work. The PoVs differ from one another, the Chatwins’ story is disturbing and thrilling, the descriptions of Fillory convincing and full of references. And there is the story of elder gods, of the Goddess hidden in Provence; the true is that it gave me much more of the pagan past and Languedoc atmosphere than, let’s say, A Song for Arbonne. However, the references are the trilogy’s weakness, too. The allusions to Hogwart are more embarrassing than funny, and the non-existence of Narnia and C.S.Lewis in the Magiciansverse can tell us a lot of Fillory’s origins. The true is that all the Narnia references feel more like a rip-off than a subtle literary allusion. There is too much of it, to say plainly — Moonjack, talking animals, two queens and two kings, the world out of any scientific cosmology, Ember as Aslan… It’s not a retelling. It’s more a wry and cynical fanfiction.

Sexism

The worst thing is that The Magicians Trilogy isn’t sexist in the way of the old pulp stories from the ’50s, putting women on the backstage only as sexy and helpless love-interests. One could even say that it isn’ t the author or the very story which is sexist — some characters are. Although, I doubt it, assuming that even the girls PoVs turn sexist sometimes, and that the women unattractive to men are supposed to be lesbians.Especially Quentin. I’ve read many books which were more brutal, more carnal and more grim, like these of EdMcDonald or Martin. And yet, never have I seen a man so obsessed with women’s boobs, not even damned Tyrion Lannister or Theon Greyjoy. The descriptions of legs, backsides and breasts aren’t useful at all in the trilogy. They only replicate the old stereotype of men caring mostly about women’s physical appearance and forms. Which isn’t true. And for such a Subtle Genius Intelligent like Quentin, quite mundane.Another question is the portrayal of the girls in the trilogy, so full of Madonna-whore dychotomy *blah*. Alice is a super-skilled-intelligent mage, an aloof girl losing her virginity to Quentin, who is her first love. SPOILERS She changes into a magical ghost, a nifflin, in Fillory, where she saves her friends. Her death is the Greatest Tragedy of Quentin’s Life Evah. SPOILERS Poppy is merely a backstage character being an evanescent love interest of bereft Quentin (and it doesn’t change absolutely ANYTHING in the plot), and then of “I’ve been fucking harpies, lol” Josh. Julia… Oh, wait, we’ll examine her character later, because there is a lot to examine. Janet is a tricky vamp fiddling with people. She seeks only sex, not love, and Quentin cheats on Alice with her during one of their mad parties. Having learnt of it, Alice just slapsbeats Quentin and then, she sleeps with Penny, another Super-Intelligent mage. And guess what? Beating a man is no better than beating a woman, although, of course, the women has been more exposed to domestic violence. I think that you already see what we have here.And the story of Julia is the climax of all the trilogy faults towards women. Julia has her own story arc and her own agency, and yet, there are so many “buts” in her plot. For Quentin, she is mainly his unconsummated love interest, the source of his frustration and dreams. For her, magic is the power for which she pays with her own body. And I have a problem with it. On the one hand, it’s painfully true — there are so many women forced to prostitution. To prostitution not only with their clients, but with their husbands, partners, employers — do not have any dellusions. Maybe this thread makes me so angry because plainly, I can’t bear the fact that the world is still so wretched. On the other hand, it’s so stereotypical, to make a woman pay for the power with sex. And near the end of the second book, this payment becomes quite terryfying.SPOILERS Julia becomes a driad because she’s been raped by an Occitan fox-god, whom she called instead of the Goddes with her super-geniuses-friends. The god killed them all except for her and one girl who managed to escape, and then, he demanded Julia as the sacrifice. *Facepalm* SPOILERSRemember, kids — boys lose hands, eyes and other body parts to gain magical powers through a sacrifice. Girls are raped. And to use a thing so terrible — and so hard-wired into the worst parts of our culture — as a mere plot device is just thoughtless and unfair. What else is more simple than causing a female character suffering by sexual violence? And endowing her with some super powers in a creepy act after which the heroine admits that despite of the pain and humilation, gaining might gave her pleasure she shouldn’t have felt? *Facepalm*One might say, “Wait, such terrible things happen, and a victim feeling pleasure is no less raped and no less a victim.” It’s true. But, assuming the boobs obsession and all the other disturbing descriptions in the trilogy, I’m strangely sure that such a message wasn’t the core of Julia’s arc. And gues what? It’s not some magical-gods-foxes-tricksters who might rape you. It might be your husband. Your partner. Your boyfriend. Somebody you know.

The Ending

The ending dissapointed me a lot, in the way too optimistic and too naïve endings do. I won’t give you any spoilers — I can only say that is it as if we moved from a dark and wry Narnia retelling to the very Narnia. Which doesn’t suits the novels and their tone at all. At first, we have swearing, sex&drugs, we have a disturbing and paradoxical magical land full of subversive tropes. At the end, we got pathetic talking of True Children’s Feelings and SPOILER the chance for Quentin and Alice to rebuild their relations. SPOILER Subversive books shouldn’t work like that, damn. It’s good for Narnia, for the Realms of the Elderlings, for Middle-Earth, but not for Fillory. And this is the main reason why I think that the trilogy of Grossman won’t be as crucial for the modern fantasy as some people might think.