The Magician King

Title: The Magician King

Author: Lev Grossman

Publisher: Viking (2011)

Genre(s): Fantasy, Fiction

Length: 400 pages

Synopsis:  The sequel to The Magicians, this novel follows the further adventures of Quentin Coldwater and his fellow magicians.  Or rather, as Quentin feels, the lack of adventure.  Happily ever after is really quite dull, he realizes, even when one is a king of a fairy-tale realm.  Even a tax-collecting trip to a far flung island sounds like a regular quest, and Quentin volunteers quite eagerly.  Before he knows it, however, the not-quite-a-quest has turned into a regular adventure with Quentin and his friends at the center and their very way of life at stake.  Quentin's got all the excitement he could ever have bargained for, but he's soon reminded that the life of a hero is never a bargain.

My Rating: 5 Stars

My Opinion:  
This book, and its prequel, The Magicians, make plenty of nods to the staples of fantasy: Harry Potter, The Lord of the Rings, The Chronicles of Narnia.  It plays quite neatly into the fantasy of every reader; what if all these wonderful worlds were real?  As fantastical a reality as Grossman's created, there's nothing sweet about these books.  In fact, they're rather bitter, almost cynical at times, but this serves to set them apart from the general fantasy fare rather than making them dark and unappealing.  What would happen, Grossman asks, if our wildest dreams came true?  What would we do with a happily-ever-after?  How can such a thing exist, even in a fairy-tale world, when ever-imperfect humans are involved?  So, no, these books aren't your typical fantasy.  They're the reality of fantasy, the grim truths we'd rather not think about when we dream of getting our letters from Hogwarts or finding a magic ring.  In Grossman's world, we might very well flunk out of wizard school, or become the Gollum of the story rather than the hero.  There is always a price to be paid, whether the world is magical or ordinary.  

It's rather difficult to write reviews for the second book of a pair, since I'd rather not give away much about the first book to those who haven't read it yet, but I will say that I liked this book rather better than the first.  The Magicians took me an unusually long time to get through, partially because I was madly busy at the time, and partially because it was, at times, difficult to like a fantasy that seemed so very much like grim reality.  By the time I finished, however, I'd come to appreciate the world that Grossman has created, and was looking forward very much to a second visit.  This book seems to accept all the qualms readers might have raised in the first, acknowledging that imperfect fantasies are uncomfortable and strange.  In a way, that makes it all the more real.  Many of the fantasy books I've read leave me with an aching emptiness where their mystical lands ought to be.  The Magician King instead leaves me with a sense of satisfaction with my lot.  Perhaps the adventures I'll have today are not so different from the adventures I'd have if I lived in those literary worlds.

A Note On Why I Read

Why do I write a book review blog?  Aren't there enough of them in the world by now?  Do I really believe my opinions make a difference?  Surely, if you've stumbled across this blog, these thoughts might have flitted across your mind, as they have across my own.

I am a student at the moment, pursuing my Master's degree.  I'll not go into detail, but suffice it to say, it's not an enjoyable process.  It's hard.  It's soul-crushing and mind-numbing.  It reduces me to irrational frustration on a regular basis.  It could be worse, of course, but there are days that even being reminded of that fact makes me want to break things with wanton abandon.

So where does reading fit in?  As the Bard once wrote, "Aye.  There's the rub."  When I've had enough of statistical analysis and computer programming and journal articles and literature reviews and traffic and bus commutes and coming home to find my dog has, once again, chewed the spine off an overly expensive textbook, I know that I have an escape hatch.  A whole shelf of them, actually.  I can flip open a book and walk out of this world into another.  I can change my story.

We are creatures of story.  Think about it.  We revere actors and screenwriters, authors and playwrights.  We gather around campfires, dining tables, and water coolers to tell our own tales.  We text and Tweet, we email and post.  We tell stories.  It's all we ever do with our lives.  And if you think of it this way, as one big story, well, then what we read is just a part of it.  Middle Earth is the place you spend your weekends.  Narnia's the break room at work.  The time you stood, invisible, beside a beloved character and watched him grieve for lost love... is that time really any different from the time you spend listening to your sister tell about the night her husband walked out on her?  Think about it!  We're hearing a story, told by someone else.  The same parts of our brains are active, if you must think of it scientifically.  We feel in exactly the same way.  No wonder stories can make us weep and laugh and rave just as flesh and blood people can.  In those moments, how can any story be greater than any other?  How can anything be more real, or more worthy, than the story?

This is why I read.  I read to feel.  I read to know myself and to try to know others.  I read to learn what is inside of me and every other person, and what is outside of us, and strung between us like invisible, silky-sticky lines of spiderweb.  I read to get out of this world, and to get into it.  I read to know that the story in which I find myself when I open my eyes in the morning is just a chapter of this great big story in which we are all merely players.  And then I come here, to this blog, and I tell you, dear readers (if there are, indeed, readers of this blog), what I found.  "Here," I say.  "Let me tell you about this wonderful place that I went."  Or perhaps, "I took a trip this weekend into another book, and I don't intend to visit again."  Look where we are again, off on another story-telling adventure.  Here I have a chance to tell my stories, and to tell you about the tales of other tellers, wondrous tales that I could not hope to do justice, tales you'll just have to explore for yourself.  Perhaps this sounds pretentious.  "All one great story, etc. etc. etc."  But why not be just a little pretentious, dear readers?  You (yes, you!) are the greatest audience a storyteller ever had.  Without a listener, our words are sound and fury, signifying nothing.  Without someone to share with, we are trapped in our own stories, echoing around our own heads like prisoners, muttering lunatic monologues.  You are unique, dear readers.  Every adventure though a book is a singular experience, an all-night conversation with the author and the characters he or she has, with your help, brought to life.  It is an adventure you can never duplicate.  But you can tell us about it.  And I hope you will.

That is what I do.  I am a student of the universe, learning chapter by chapter in this story we're in, and sharing what I find for the sheer glee of being able to do so.  Join me, won't you?  Let's sit by the fire tonight and tell our stories.  We have all the time in the world.

Perfume: The Story of a Murderer

Title: Perfume: The Story of a Murderer

Author: Patrick Süskind (Translated from German by John E. Woods)

Publisher: Alfred A. Knopf (1986)

Genre(s): Historical Fiction, Mystery, Science Fiction, Literary Fiction

Length: 255 pages

Synopsis:  Jean-Baptiste Grenouille is a “gifted abomination,” a man whose olfactory abilities are so extraordinary he can recreate the most exquisite perfumes after smelling them only once.  He could easily be the most renowned perfumer in all of France, but Grenouille has other aspirations.  He plans to create a scent so intoxicating that the world will fall before his feet.  No ordinary ingredients will do, of course.  For this “master scent,” Grenouille will need to bottle the essence of humanity.

My Rating: 5 Stars

My Opinion: 

This is one of the most delightfully disturbing books I have read in quite some time.  In structure, it reminds me quite a bit of classic literature: Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment and Thomas Hardy’s Jude the Obscure in particular.  I don’t mean to suggest that the text is at all dense or inaccessible.  Quite the contrary, in fact, though I can’t help but wonder how much of that is due to the translation from the text’s original German.  The story keeps the reader at arm’s length from its grotesque central character, allowing the omniscient third person narrator to explore the tangential stories of lives brushing up against Grenouille’s.  None of these lead to any great development of character; indeed, Grenouille’s motives appear hazy even to himself.  Though the characters and plot are quite simplistic, the text itself is anything but.  The book is rife with metaphor, allusion, and opportunities to explore certain truths of the human condition.  Is Grenouille perhaps a human incarnation of Satan, working his will with scent instead of a similarly nebulous evil?  Is he merely a device to reveal the fallibility of humanity, its reliance on instincts considered base and primal?  Without cluttering plot or characterization, the reader is free to explore all these trains of thought while racing through the book itself (it took me only an afternoon or so to finish, despite its length).  Readers unwilling to devote their time to this extra-literary exploration will likely find the book somewhat disappointing, as it lacks many of the “modern” literary conventions and defies categorization by genre.  For anyone looking for a new book-group read or literary paper topic, however, I think Perfume would be an excellent place to start.