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Description edit
A thrilling and original coming-of-age novel about a young man practicing magic in the real world Quentin Coldwater is brilliant but miserable. A senior in high school, he’s still secretly preoccupied with a series of fantasy novels he read as a child, set in a magical land called Fillory.... read more
Ridiculously Simplified Synopsis edit
Summary edit
"The Magicians" tells the story of Quentin Coldwater, an ordinary seventeen-year-old New Yorker who gets the opportunity of a lifetime: to attend a secret, magical college called Brakebills. Quentin and his friends are the pampered, bored products of the modern age. They use magic like they... read more (warning: may contain spoilers)
Characters edit
- Quentin Coldwater: An intelligent, seventeen-year-old native New Yorker who is obsessed with magic and longs to have a magical adventure. Quentin is the main character in the story, and the book is told entirely from his POV.
- Alice: Shy girl who is a pretty spiffy Magician. She has an older brother that went to Breakbill and desperately wants to be there. She becomes Quinton's girlfriend.
- Eliot: Troubled alcoholic, effortlessly brilliant. Part of the Physical Kids - the rarest discipline. They have a tendency to be very cliquish and snobbish.
- Janet Way: Overbearing, promiscuous, and fun. Not a very good person. Part of the Physical Kids.
- Josh Hoberman: Erratic opinion of himself. One of the least brooding characters. Part of the Physical Kids.
- Martin Chatwin: A character from the Fillory books. The oldest of the Chatwin siblings.
- James: Good at everything, enviable, happy.
- Richard: A Christian observer, notedly rare among magicians. At Breakbills he was part of the Physical Kids.
- Professor Mayakovsky: A Russian wizard who taught at Brakebills. Now teaches at Brakebills South. His father had been a Dean of Brakebills.
- Julia: James' girlfriend. Quinton thinks he loves her.
- Professor Melanie Van Der Weghe: She is a professor at Breakbills. She is the one that has Penny, Quinton, and Alice attempt to skip their Freshman yea.
- Surendra: Brakebills student and Quinton's first year lab partner. Ge is the son of an immensely wealthy Bengali-American computer executive from San Diego. Brutally sarcastic.
- Dean Fogg: Dean of Brakebills
- Helen Chatwin: The eldest Chatwin female.
- Lovelady: A salesman that often visits Breakbill.
- Bigby: The Physical Kids' unoffical faculty advisor. He is a Pixie.
- Farvel: A walking talking birch tree in Fillory.
- Emily Greenstreet: A former student at Brakebills. She was the first person to voluntarily leave Breakbills in 150 years.
- Amanda Orloff: Add a description of this character.
- Rupert Chatwin: One of the Fillory Chatwin siblings.
- Anais: Girlfriend of Josh.She was the team Luxemborg's welters team captain. She is beautiful with curly blonde hair.
- Fiona: A character from the Fillory books that Quinton loves.
- Humbledrum: A talking brown bear who lives in Fillory.
- Professor Brzezinski: An older teacher that specializes in potions.
- Christopher Plover: Author of the Fillory series of books.
- Eric: A student at Breakbill. He is "friends" with Eliot.
- Jane Chatwin: A character from the Fillory books. She is one of the Chatwin siblings and has an unpredictable sense of humor with a sharper edge.
- Charlie: Alice's deceased brother.
- Professor March: He teaches the Freshman. He looks like he shoudl be jolly and easy-going but isn't.
- Rakshasa!: Surenda's marble
- Martin: Quinton's marble
- Penny: A punk who enters Brakebills in the same year as Quentin. He's a strange loner with no sense of humor.
- Professor Sunderland: A beautiful teacher that Quinton has a crush on.
- Professor Petitpoids: Makes students address her as a witch. She is an ancient, slightly dotty Hatian. She is one to fthe second year teachers.
- Professor Heckler: He is a 2nd year teacher. Originally from Germany and close to 7 feet tall.
- Gretchen: A second year student with a bad leg. She believes that if she were to have her leg fixed she would no longer be magical because that is where her power comes from.
- Chambers: He is the butler for Brakebills.
- Professor Foxtree: A tall Native American with an easy good humor. Students respect him instictively.
- Georgia: A student from Michigan. She came to Brakebills against her parent's will.
- Ember & Umber: Magic sheep/rams. They are slightly Orwellian in their oversight of Fillory.
- Dint: A magician and guide.
- Fen: A disciplined martial artist specializing in the art of inc aga.
- Alder Acorn Agnes Allison-fragrant-timber: Sturdy sun-kissed woman with short brown hair who just happened to be attached to the chassis of a sleek black mare. A character in Fillory.
- Doris
- Bertrand Russell
- Beast: A creature with a hidden face who shows up in class one day.
- Henry Fogg: The Dean at Brakebills.
- Amelia Popper: Author of one of the school's textbooks.
- Emma Curtis
- Loria: The evil land over the Western mountains next to the country of Fillory.
- Anaïs: From a European magician's school and joins the main Brakebill's group after Alice and Quentin graduate.
- Dean Mayakovsky: Dean of Brakebills South in Antarctica
- Quentin: The main character in the story.
Quotes edit
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“But I"ll tell you something: I think you're magicians because you're unhappy. A magician is strong because he feels pain. He feels the difference between what the world is and what he would make of it."”
Dean Fogg -
“Quentin's conversations with his parents were so circular and self-defeating, they sounded like experimental theater.”
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“Turtles all the way down.”
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“The thick plottens.”
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“In Fillory there's an eclipse every day at noon, and season's can last for a hundred years. Bare trees scratch at the sky. Pale green seas lap at narrow white beaches made of broken shells. In Fillory things mattered in a way they didn't in this world. In Fillory you felt the appropriate emotions when things happened. Happiness was a real, actual, achievable possibility. It came when you called. Or no, it never left you in the first place.”
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“Are you kidding? That guy was a mystery wrapped in an enigma and crudely stapled to a ticking fucking time bomb. He was either going to hit somebody or start a blog. To tell you the truth I'm kind of glad he hit you.”
Josh -
“She was deeply, passionately, delusionally in love. Wuthering Heights love. She stood outside his window at night. She drew little pictures of him in class. She looked at the moon and cried. She drew little pictures of the moon in class and cried at them.”
Janet -
“Sure, you can live out your dreams, but it'll only turn you into a monster. Better to stay home and do card tricks in your bedroom instead. Pg. 382”
Quentin Coldwater -
“She <Janet> had terrible taste in men - the best that could be said of her endless series of boyfriends is that none of them lasted long.”
Narrator -
“He'd started that little speech speaking normally and he ended it shouting. In a way fighting like this was just like using magic. You sid the words, and they altered the universe. By merely speaking you could create damage and pain, cause tears to fall, drive peopel away, make yourself feel better, make your life worse.”
Narrator
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“The problem with growing up,” Quentin said, “is that once you’re grown up, people who aren’t grown up aren’t fun anymore.”
Highlighted by 178 Kindle customers -
In a way fighting like this was just like using magic. You said the words, and they altered the universe. By merely speaking you could create damage and pain, cause tears to fall, drive people away, make yourself feel better, make your life worse.
Highlighted by 155 Kindle customers -
A magician is strong because he feels pain. He feels the difference between what the world is and what he would make of it.
Highlighted by 152 Kindle customers -
That guy was a mystery wrapped in an enigma and crudely stapled to a ticking fucking time bomb. He was either going to hit somebody or start a blog.
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I got my heart’s desire, he thought, and there my troubles began.
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“I will stop being a mouse, Quentin. I will take some chances. If you will, for just one second, look at your life and see how perfect it is. Stop looking for the next secret door that is going to lead you to your real life. Stop waiting. This is it: there’s nothing else. It’s here, and you’d better decide to enjoy it or you’re going to be miserable wherever you go, for the rest of your life, forever.”
Highlighted by 109 Kindle customers -
“The study of magic is not a science, it is not an art, and it is not a religion. Magic is a craft. When we do magic, we do not wish and we do not pray. We rely upon our will and our knowledge and our skill to make a specific change to the world.
Highlighted by 87 Kindle customers -
He was experimenting cautiously with the idea of being happy, dipping an uncertain toe into those intoxicatingly carbonated waters.
Highlighted by 87 Kindle customers -
but a book that did what books always promised to do and never actually quite did: get you out, really out, of where you were and into somewhere better.
Highlighted by 86 Kindle customers -
It never failed to astonish him, then or ever, how much of the world around him was mysterious and hidden from view.
Highlighted by 60 Kindle customers
Setting & Locations edit
- Brooklyn, New York: Where Quentin lived before going to Breakbills.
- Manhattan New York: Where Quentin and the Physical Kids live after Breakbills.
- New York: Breakbills is located in Upper State New York near West Point.
- Antarctica: Where the Breakbills students have to spend a semester.
- Fillory: A kingdom in the books that Quentin and Alice enjoy reading.
- Brakebills College for Magical Pedagogy: The elite college the Quentin attends and half the story takes place at.
- Illinois: The state where Alice is from. Alice and Quentin visit her parents over their last break.
- Chesteron, Massachusetts: Quentin's parents sell their Brooklyn, NY townhouse and move to this suburb of Boston.
- Oslo, Maine: Where Penny went after leaving Breakbills.
- Neitherlands: It's neither here nor there - sometimes just called the City. Transitional world between the real world and Fillory.
- Loria: The supposedly evil country bordering the Filloran Kingdom to the North. Known for their ship-making.
First Sentence edit
Quentin did a magic trick.
Table of Contents edit
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Epigraph
Book I
Brooklyn
Brakebills
Eliot
Magic
Snow
The Missing Boy
The Physical Kids
The Beast
Lovelady
Marie Byrd Land
Alice
Emily Greenstreet
Fifth Year
Graduation
Book II
Manhattan
Penny's Story
The Neitherlands
Upstate
Book III
Fillory
Humbledrum
Ember's Tomb
The Ram
Book IV
The Retreat
The White Stag
Kings and Queens
Glossary edit
- niffin: A being made of pure magical energy, highly unstable and very dangerous. A wizard becomes a niffin when they use magic outside of their capabilities or are careless in constraining their spells. The magic consumes them and creates the short lived (but terrible) niffin.
- obstreperous: adj. 1. Noisily and stubbornly defiant. 2. Aggressively boisterous.
- actuary: n pl -aries (Business / Professions) a person qualified to calculate commercial risks and probabilities involving uncertain future events, esp in such contexts as life assurance
- weathervane: n. A device for indicating wind direction.
- eidetic: adj. Of, relating to, or marked by extraordinarily detailed and vivid recall of visual images.
- amatriciana: Sugo all'amatriciana or alla matriciana (in Romanesco) is a traditional Italian pasta sauce based on guanciale (dried pork cheek), pecorino cheese and tomato.
- guanciale: dried pork cheek
- persnickety: adj. snooty, snob
- indomitability: indomitable - adj.Incapable of being overcome, subdued, or vanquished; unconquerable.
- glebe: n. 1. A plot of land belonging or yielding profit to an English parish church or an ecclesiastical office. 2. Archaic The soil or earth; land.
- gobsmackingly: astoundingly
- glassine: n. A nearly transparent, resilient glazed paper resistant to the passage of air and grease.
- dipsomaniac: n. An insatiable craving for alcoholic beverages.
- miscegenation: n. Cohabitation, sexual relations, marriage, or interbreeding involving persons of different races, especially in historical contexts as a transgression of the law.
- gumption: n Informal 1. Brit common sense or resourcefulness 2. initiative or courage you haven't the gumption to try
- italianate: adj Italian in style or character
- asinine: adj. 1. Utterly stupid or silly: asinine behavior.
- primeval: adj. Belonging to the first or earliest age or ages; original or ancient: a primeval forest.
- munificent: adj 1. (of a person) very generous; bountiful 2. (of a gift) generous; liberal
Series & Lists edit
This is book 1 of 2 in The Magicians Trilogy. (standard series)
Followed by The Magician King.
This is book 60 of 159 in Fantasy Book Review Top 100 fantasy books of all time. (community list)
This book is in 2011-2012 Iowa High School Battle of the Books. (authoritative list)
First Edition edit
Original Language: English
Publisher: Viking
Country: USA
Publication Date: 2009
ISBN: 0670020559
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Viking
Country: USA
Publication Date: 2009
ISBN: 0670020559
Page Count: 416
Awards edit
- Amazon.com's Best Books (November 2009: Editors' Picks, #52)
- Alex Awards (January 2010)
- John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer (2011)
- The Kitschies (Finalist, 2009: The Red Tentacle for Best Novel, Finalist)
Classification edit
- Library of Congress: PS3557.R6725 M34 2009
- Dewey: 813.54
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