Book 3: The Magician's Land

[diebartdie]

OK, instead of asking EB to start this, Im just going to quote her with a couple edits

Quote

There is already a general thread to discuss the books vs. the show, but people can discuss all three books there. This thread is intended for discussing ONLY the third book in the series (no discussion of the first or second books here!). I figure I can't be the only one who likes to stay unspoiled for the show but then reads the corresponding book after the season ends! You can safely discuss the first book in this thread without worrying about spoilers from the first or second book.

which why would you start with the third book? ANYWAY I just finished the third book, it was really pretty great! I loved that Quinton became a professor at Brakebills, he really went full circle there. It was a little sad to see how low he went after losing that job but when it was revealed how and why he lost his professor gig, that was really neat too. The character of Plum was almost like Janet's attitude over Quinton's journey if you get what Im saying. I was overjoyed when Alice came back but I thought her story of her time as a niffin was too similar to Buffy's lament in Once More with Feeling,

"There was no pain
   No fear, no doubt
   Till they pulled me out
   Of Heaven.

So that's my refrain.

I live in Hell

   'Cause I've been expelled
   From Heaven
   I think I was in Heaven

   So give me something to sing about.

   Please
   Give me something..."

I mean seriously, that's what Alice was saying but not in a song and it went on a shit load longer than the Buffy song plus, Alice was incredibly cruel to Quinton.

The destruction of Fillory was so wild and I might have even gotten a misty eyed once or twice but I so loved that it was Janet bearing witness to all of it. My only real complaint would be that when Quinton swelled up to godhood, both Alice and Julia ought to have played a role in the creation, both for different aspect of creation. Sure there was the later scene of Julia committing smaller acts of creation on the fledgling NewFillory but there was not enough of that and where was Alice? I got the impression in the end that the author intended that the reader have the idea that Alice was still part niffin, if so that should have been shown a bit more and especially during the creation sequence, like 1/2 the magic or even all the magic in NewFillory could have been caused by mischievous Aliceniffin, you know? Anyway, a lot of it was funny to me, like everything Umber did was both funny and as Quinton said, perverse. What a weirdo! I thought it was quite funny that the stop watch Q brought back from Fillory never did anything at all except make a new clocktree in Quinton's magic bridgeland. I left the book imagining Q and A curled up like kittens on the cozyhorse's back, sleeping a thousand years only to wake up and have to deal with some new adventure in NewFillory. I think the third book was probably my favorite in a lot of ways, I just wish there had been more Julia and Alice!

Edited December 29, 2016 by SilverStormm
Added Book Tag

[Hanahope]

I am looking forward to seeing how they depict at least some of these events in the show.  The whole building up to the heist aught to be good, as well as Q's professortorialship. Based on the show so far, I'm assuming we get to see how Julia (and Asmo) take down Renard.