One of my resolutions this year is to read more books. It's a habit I've fallen out of in the last so many years, for this reason or that. To make things more interesting, I've challenged myself to 26 books, half of which not written by straight white men.
As always, there is a slight chance for spoilers, though I try to keep them vague or to a minimum. I failed at this with The Magician King because of the two, it's the fresher in my mind and there was a lot to rant about.
I started the year with Naomi Novik's Spinning Silver. I have not read her Temeraire series (though![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
everysecondtuesday has put it on my radar at some point), but I loved her standalone novel, Uprooted.
Like Uprooted, Spinning Silver is a retelling of a fairy tale - in this case, Rumpelstiltskin. Miryem, the daughter of an impoverished and kindly moneylender (and a very accomplished one herself), boasts one day that she can spin gold from silver. Unfortunately, this is overheard by the king of the Staryk - the novel's otherworldly fae-like beings - who takes her up on her boast, challenging her to spin his silver into gold within an amount of time. If she wins, he'll take her hand in marriage. She totally doesn't want this, but it's better than the alternative: death.
I'm summarizing this as vaguely as I can without giving away too many spoilers. The book itself was an engaging read. It wasn't the kind of book, though, that I could easily read in a few sittings; it's longer than Uprooted and slowly paces enough that I could put it down for a bit as needed. I appreciate that Novik wrote a Jewish character in a medieval Central Europe fantasy setting, rather than create an entirely new minority group in a more fantastical setting as an analogue to explore Jewish identity and widespread antisemitism. Spinning Silver's world shares roots with our own.
The novel also touches on the roles of women, consent, and what I suspect was neurodivergence in one of the characters. My only gripe was the number of perspectives that the book switches between, but even then, this is only a very minor complaint. I truly appreciated and enjoyed most of them, though at least one felt like it was out of place.
Overall, Spinning Silver was a great way to start the New Year.
I followed Spinning Silver with The Magician King by Lev Grossman. Full disclosure: I watched the Syfy show based on his books before I picked up The Magicians last year. I also happened to binge on Season 3 before reading this book.
The more I read The Magicians Trilogy, the more I suspect that the show misses the point of the books. That's not to say that the books are superior or the show is complete trash; they're just two very different creatures. The Magicians (TV) is enjoyable in a way that isn't intentionally offensive. It missteps a lot, and its narrative is fairly overloaded with tropes. Overall, though, its characters are extremely likable and you can't really help but root for them.
The Magicians (Books) is less sympathetic, more cynical, still trope-y as hell, but definitely more aware of itself. I spent the first book loathing anyone that wasn't Alice or Penny (though both characters had their bad moments as well) and most often raging at Quentin for being an entitled little shit. All the characters grew in some capacity, so by the end, I had hope they would be better people.
The Magician King picks up a bit after where The Magicians left off. Quentin is still an entitled little shit, but now he has wealth and power to back it up. Unfortunately, his new lifestyle in the land of his boyhood dreams proves to be less the magic (ha) cure all for his depression and ennui. The book knows this, we know it, but Quentin needs to go on a quest that takes him from Fillory and back before he can figure this out.
This book is about hard lessons. From Quentin's quest for the Seven Golden Keys to Julia's journey as a hedge witch and obsession to uncover more knowledge and power, these characters pay steep prices for what they search for. Julia's is the most unnecessarily crueler of the two. If you've seen Season One, then you'll already know what it is, but here, it's so much worse. The resolution of her arc left me a bit disappointed, however, as it didn't really offer an answer to why it ended how it ended. From the sequence of events presented in the book, it's easy to infer that her fate resulted from the power she received initially, though I think the book wants you to believe it was a blessing from something more divine after all.
As interesting as her story is (moreso than Quentin's), it was only halfway told. Most of her narrative occurs in alternate chapters as a flashback that run concurrent to The Magicians; we get the build up and the eventual fall, but we see nothing of the recovery. The present is Quentin's story, but he's not really interested in helping her through her trauma. He says he wants to help, but he never actually commits. Instead, he just kinda flounders in his intentions and ends up not really paying her much mind, except at the beginning when he just wants to bang her. When Poppy comes along, Julia becomes an afterthought, a background character that Quentin engages only on necessity of the plot.
Quentin is gross. Like, really gross.
Overall, The Magician King was good on the merit of its own awareness, rather than its main character. Its pacing was fast enough and the story engaging that I wound up finishing the book within a week of checking it out. As mentioned, it's very much aware of itself in a way that isn't limited from its third person limited perspective; I don't take the views of the protagonist as the sentiments of the author. The book continuously challenges Quentin's ideas. Quentin remains frustrating, but he's meant to grow over the trilogy, not stagnate in his own shortsightedness and fanboy obsession. I'm hoping Magician's Land resolves his coming of age story in a way that's satisfying, but I won't be reading it any time soon. I'm not burnt out, but I would like to move on to another book by another author before returning later in the year to the last book.
As always, there is a slight chance for spoilers, though I try to keep them vague or to a minimum. I failed at this with The Magician King because of the two, it's the fresher in my mind and there was a lot to rant about.
I started the year with Naomi Novik's Spinning Silver. I have not read her Temeraire series (though
everysecondtuesday has put it on my radar at some point), but I loved her standalone novel, Uprooted.Like Uprooted, Spinning Silver is a retelling of a fairy tale - in this case, Rumpelstiltskin. Miryem, the daughter of an impoverished and kindly moneylender (and a very accomplished one herself), boasts one day that she can spin gold from silver. Unfortunately, this is overheard by the king of the Staryk - the novel's otherworldly fae-like beings - who takes her up on her boast, challenging her to spin his silver into gold within an amount of time. If she wins, he'll take her hand in marriage. She totally doesn't want this, but it's better than the alternative: death.
I'm summarizing this as vaguely as I can without giving away too many spoilers. The book itself was an engaging read. It wasn't the kind of book, though, that I could easily read in a few sittings; it's longer than Uprooted and slowly paces enough that I could put it down for a bit as needed. I appreciate that Novik wrote a Jewish character in a medieval Central Europe fantasy setting, rather than create an entirely new minority group in a more fantastical setting as an analogue to explore Jewish identity and widespread antisemitism. Spinning Silver's world shares roots with our own.
The novel also touches on the roles of women, consent, and what I suspect was neurodivergence in one of the characters. My only gripe was the number of perspectives that the book switches between, but even then, this is only a very minor complaint. I truly appreciated and enjoyed most of them, though at least one felt like it was out of place.
Overall, Spinning Silver was a great way to start the New Year.
I followed Spinning Silver with The Magician King by Lev Grossman. Full disclosure: I watched the Syfy show based on his books before I picked up The Magicians last year. I also happened to binge on Season 3 before reading this book.
The more I read The Magicians Trilogy, the more I suspect that the show misses the point of the books. That's not to say that the books are superior or the show is complete trash; they're just two very different creatures. The Magicians (TV) is enjoyable in a way that isn't intentionally offensive. It missteps a lot, and its narrative is fairly overloaded with tropes. Overall, though, its characters are extremely likable and you can't really help but root for them.
The Magicians (Books) is less sympathetic, more cynical, still trope-y as hell, but definitely more aware of itself. I spent the first book loathing anyone that wasn't Alice or Penny (though both characters had their bad moments as well) and most often raging at Quentin for being an entitled little shit. All the characters grew in some capacity, so by the end, I had hope they would be better people.
The Magician King picks up a bit after where The Magicians left off. Quentin is still an entitled little shit, but now he has wealth and power to back it up. Unfortunately, his new lifestyle in the land of his boyhood dreams proves to be less the magic (ha) cure all for his depression and ennui. The book knows this, we know it, but Quentin needs to go on a quest that takes him from Fillory and back before he can figure this out.
This book is about hard lessons. From Quentin's quest for the Seven Golden Keys to Julia's journey as a hedge witch and obsession to uncover more knowledge and power, these characters pay steep prices for what they search for. Julia's is the most unnecessarily crueler of the two. If you've seen Season One, then you'll already know what it is, but here, it's so much worse. The resolution of her arc left me a bit disappointed, however, as it didn't really offer an answer to why it ended how it ended. From the sequence of events presented in the book, it's easy to infer that her fate resulted from the power she received initially, though I think the book wants you to believe it was a blessing from something more divine after all.
As interesting as her story is (moreso than Quentin's), it was only halfway told. Most of her narrative occurs in alternate chapters as a flashback that run concurrent to The Magicians; we get the build up and the eventual fall, but we see nothing of the recovery. The present is Quentin's story, but he's not really interested in helping her through her trauma. He says he wants to help, but he never actually commits. Instead, he just kinda flounders in his intentions and ends up not really paying her much mind, except at the beginning when he just wants to bang her. When Poppy comes along, Julia becomes an afterthought, a background character that Quentin engages only on necessity of the plot.
Quentin is gross. Like, really gross.
Overall, The Magician King was good on the merit of its own awareness, rather than its main character. Its pacing was fast enough and the story engaging that I wound up finishing the book within a week of checking it out. As mentioned, it's very much aware of itself in a way that isn't limited from its third person limited perspective; I don't take the views of the protagonist as the sentiments of the author. The book continuously challenges Quentin's ideas. Quentin remains frustrating, but he's meant to grow over the trilogy, not stagnate in his own shortsightedness and fanboy obsession. I'm hoping Magician's Land resolves his coming of age story in a way that's satisfying, but I won't be reading it any time soon. I'm not burnt out, but I would like to move on to another book by another author before returning later in the year to the last book.
