The Magician’s Land (The Magicians #3)

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Note: This review may contain spoilers if you have not read The Magicians or The Magician King.

I did it! I have finished the The Magicians trilogy! I’m usually pretty terrible at accomplishing that actually. I tend to get bored and uninterested very quickly, therefore standalone novels are usually my go-to choice. However, because this series has been adapted into a television series, and because that television series is telling the story slightly out of order, I decided that I needed to finish this trilogy in its entirety before diving into the television series.

I must say that The Magician’s Land was a pretty solid finale to a pretty solid trilogy. As I have mentioned in my previous reviews of the first two novels, this series has been met with mixed reviews and opinions. I went into this series thinking that I wasn’t really going to like it based on the reviews of other readers alone. This is a perfect example of why you should always form your own personal opinions. I ended up really enjoying this series way more than I had imagined I would.

Each of the characters finally grew up and matured, especially our main character, Quentin Coldwater. As I mentioned previously, Quentin was pretty immature for the most part during the first two novels, The Magicians and The Magician King. However, by the time we get to this third and final novel, Quentin has grown up. He is now a 30 year old professor at Brakebills, his magical alma mater, after being kicked out of Fillory. While Quentin is stuck on Earth, his friends Eliot, Janet, Julia, Josh and Poppy are still ruling the land of Fillory. Quentin obviously misses his friends and Fillory, but he has accepted the fact that he is no longer wanted there. This is a huge sign that he has matured immensely as he would have whined and complained about it previously.

The other characters have grown as well. Eliot is still High King and out of everyone, he misses Quentin the most, but he has accepted his responsibility as ruler of the magical land of Fillory. Josh and Poppy have filled in the open spots for the second King and Queen of Fillory after Quentin was kicked out and Julia became a higher being in charge of ruling the far side of Fillory. The only character I still have indifferent feelings towards is Janet. I just don’t feel like she served any important purpose other than being High Queen…for some reason I can’t quite understand. We were also introduced to a new character named Plum, a current student at Brakebills and who has a deep connection to Fillory that she has kept a secret. Although I didn’t really understand the purpose of her at first, the reasoning behind adding her character into the story made sense as I continued reading.

Where I didn’t enjoy the amount of world jumping between Earth, Fillory and The Underworld in The Magician King, I didn’t mind the amount of world jumping in The Magician’s Land. I think that the reason it worked so well this time around was because the story was told from different perspectives depending on which land we were currently in. Most of the moments on Earth were told by Quentin, where as the moments in Fillory were told by Eliot and Janet. I think this provided a fresh take on the writing style and the storytelling.

I loved the inclusion of the novel by Rupert Chatwin that provided a bit of backstory and history of the Chatwin children. I’m glad that we got to learn more about them and how the stories of Fillory first began.

Now that I am finally finished this trilogy, I can finally continue watching the series after having only seen the first two episodes. I absolutely loved reading these three novels and I can definitely say that I was highly entertained while reading all three. I’m glad to have made it though another entire trilogy, but I’m also sad that I won’t be able to read any more of it…thank goodness for the television series!