Christmas Albums 2011: #2 - Under The Mistletoe

Under the Mistletoe by Justin Bieber (Island Records, 2001. 38 Minutes)

Born in 1994, Justin Bieber has received several awards including a Juno award for best pop album of the year for My World 2.0 in 2011. He was also nominated for Best New Artist and Best Pop Vocal Album at the 53rd Grammy Awards. A teen idol, his best known song is “Baby”, of which the music video is currently ranked as the most discussed Youtube video.

I’m not a Belieber 

First, let me say I don’t like Justin Bieber, and never have. I find his teen pop vocals disturbingly bad, and frankly now that he’s no longer a high voiced soprano, any novelty that was associated with him is now gone.

I wanted to absolutely hate this album; I hoped this review would be plagued with jokes about Bieber’s manhood, his terrible musicality, and anything else I could jadedly throw out at him. But, the sad truth is, there are one or two redeeming qualities to the album and in an effort to be honest, I’ll share them with you.

Mistletoe 

His title track, “Under the Mistletoe” actually fits his voice; it’s somewhat catchy, mellow, and not that bad to listen to. However, I did feel like he was trying to be Bruno Mars, and that attempt didn’t sit that well with me, because amateurs imitate and professionals should innovate. He sounds the most mature vocally on the title track, and I think it’s most likely because the Canadian group The Messengers, known for their intricate style, helped produce this track.

Fa La La 

Secondly, the tune, “Fa La La”, was actually a significant surprise for me, not because of Justin Bieber’s contribution, but because Boyz-II-Men made a guest appearance. Their vocal talent helped the song out tremendously and I daresay I even enjoyed the song to a certain extent. On the other hand, however, and perhaps condemningly, Boyz-II-Men’s performance greatly outshines Justin Bieber in comparison.

Christmas Desecrations 

Sadly, after “Mistletoe” and “Fa la la” which at least had some redeeming qualities, the album made a desecration of the entire Christmas tradition. I’ve always loved the song “Drummer Boy”, but Bieber made it a terrible song by rapping after every verse with Busta Rhymes after some terrible auto-tuned T-Pain-like vocals. This song is exactly what I feared I would hear on the album. “Santa Claus is Coming to Town” also delivers the same sentiment along with Mariah Carey singing on the terrible semi-flirty rendition of “All I Want for Christmas is You.”

All in all, this album was the disappointment I expected it to be, but there were a couple gems I could muster through. Christmas albums that are good survive decades and are passed down to children and children’s children. This album assuredly won’t be passed down to another generation, or at least, for the love of God, I hope not.

Verdict: 1 out of 5

Posted by: Andrew Jacobson

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Book Review: The Hunger Games

The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins (New York: Scholastic Inc., 2008. 384 pp)

Suzanne Collins began her writing career in children’s television. While working for Nickelodeon, Collins wrote for many shows, chief among them Clarissa Explains it All and The Mystery Files of Shelby Woo. Eventually, Collins moved to children’s literature writing a five-part series, The Underland Chronicles. Her Hunger Games trilogy, however, has received high acclaim, and the first book has been adapted into a major motion picture. Collins lives in Connecticut with her family.

A Trilogy

Trilogy is not only a word that piques the interest of an avid subset of moviegoers, but is also a word that equals a goldmine for movie executives. No matter the genre or story the movie business leaves every big budget narrative open ended to ensure unending story-lines and movies.

From a business perspective, I completely understand the strategy. Who wouldn’t want a continuous influx of cash? From an artistic perspective, however, trilogies leave much to be desired.

The Hunger and the Game

The Hunger Games is the latest “it” story for young adults. Suzanne Collins’ The Hunger Games follows the lives of protagonists Katniss Everdeen and Peeta Mallark in the dystopian ruins of North America – now called “Panem”.

Set in a period after a failed rebellion, Panem is ruthlessly ruled by The Capitol – a centralized city guarded by the Rocky Mountains. The Capitol reigns over twelve districts pillaging the resources of these communities leaving them barely above subsistence. In fact, the lack of resources leaves many citizens wishing for a quick and painless death instead of starvation. At one point, Katniss states,

“Anyway, Gale and I agree that if we have to choose between dying of hunger and a bullet in the head, the bullet would be much quicker” (17).

As a means of controlling the population and instilling fear in the districts, The Capitol holds “The Hunger Games” every year. By law, The Capitol holds a raffle selecting one male and one female under the age of eighteen as “tributes” to compete in these lethal games. The sole survivor’s region wins one year’s worth of resources.

Describing the influence of The Capitol on her district, Katniss complains,

“Taking the kids from our districts, forcing them to kill one another while we watch – this is The Capitol’s way of reminding us how totally we are at their mercy. How little chance we would stand of surviving another rebellion. Whatever words they use, the real message is clear. ‘Look how we take your children and sacrifice them and there’s nothing you can do. If you lift a finger, we will destroy every last one of you. Just as we did in District Thirteen’” (18-19).

As chance has it, The Capitol selects Katniss and Peeta from District 12 (the region inhabited by our protagonists). Swept onto a train, the duo travels to The Capitol to be made over, advertised, and trained to kill. Despite the perpetual underdog status of District 12, Katniss’ hunting ability and Peeta’s brute strength provides a higher amount of hope for their families and friends back home.

No matter the ethical stance on violence, each tribute must fight when they enter the arena. Gruesomely, every second of The Hunger Games is televised with mandatory watching for each district as punishment for the rebellion. Of course, some will find such games entertaining much like the Roman gladiatorial games but most consider watching the deaths of their family and friends to be horrifying. Understanding this voyeurism, the tributes play to the crowds in order to gain favor.

At one point Katniss responds with the viewers in mind,

“The thought makes me smile. I drop my hands and hold my face up to the moonlight so the cameras can be sure to catch it” (248).

  When a Good Plot Suffers from Profit

Despite this extremely compelling plot, I found The Hunger Games lacking. With prose and marketing pointing toward a trilogy, the novel loses its edginess. In a fight-to-the-death battle arena, what fear does the reader have for Katniss, and Peeta to a lesser extent, when he or she knows that two more installments are on their way? Yes, given the rules of the games, a district member will eventually need to kill the other district member.  But what does it matter provided that the district gains resources?

In this simple principle lies my greatest annoyance with The Hunger Games. I wanted to feel the tenseness of the arena as Katniss and Peeta fight for survival, but I didn’t because I knew that death meant no more story, and no more story means no trilogy.

I know the upcoming feature film of The Hunger Games will make everyone involved incredibly rich. Sadly, the pursuit of external wealth inhibits the effectiveness of the story. For this reason, I find it difficult to recommend The Hunger Games.

Verdict: 2 out of 5

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Posted by: Donovan Richards

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Television Show Review: Once Upon a Time

Once Upon a Time: Season 1 created by Adam Horowitz and Edward Kitsis (Kitsis/Horowitz, and ABC Studios, airs Saturday nights at 8/7c on ABC Starring Ginnifer Goodwin, Jennifer Morrison, and Lana Parrilla

Why Fairy Tales All of a Sudden? 

Last week I reviewed the television program Grimm. Naturally, I thought it appropriate to review its ABC rival, Once Upon a Time. Both shows are incredibly alike in that they use common fairy tales as a point of reference. However, the two could not be any more different.

The creation of both seems to coincide with fantasy, a niche market, achieving widespread popularity. Since an adaptation of Harry Potter and Twilight means paying lots of money for the rights to broadcasting an author’s work, major networks utilize fairy tales which are one hundred percent free, exist in the public domain, and still make a ton of money.

Once Upon a Time transforms the fairy tale into the modern area with the premise that there is a town called Storybrooke where fairy tale characters are trapped by an evil spell – much like the movie Enchanted. Most of the characters don’t know they are trapped in this world with no memory of their past lives because they are enchanted by the malevolent spell cast by the Evil Queen (Lana Parrilla) who is encouraged by the malicious Rumpelstiltskin (Robert Carlyle) to cast said spell.

Hope 

Photo by Onion

Unlike Grimm, there is an incredible amount of hope in Once Upon a Time. The ABC series uses hope as a mechanism for escape, providing the viewer with the ability to hold on to hope in their own lives. Edward Katsis, co-creator and executive producer of the series, states,

"For us, that’s what a fairytale is. It’s that ability to think your life will get better. It’s why you buy a lottery ticket—because if you win you get to tell your boss that you’re quitting and you get to move to Paris or wherever and be who you always wanted to be. And that’s Cinderella, right? One day she’s sweeping up and the next she’s going to the ball. Adam and I just wanted to write about something hopeful that for one hour a week allows one to put everything aside and have that feeling that your dreams just may come true"

Hope in Once Upon a Time isn’t only that these characters stuck in our world will return to their normal lives; it is also that a mother, and our protagonist, Emma Swan (Jennifer Morrison) can rekindle her relationship with her son whom she gave up for adoption 10 years ago. Her son, Henry (Jared Gilmore), believes that Emma is the long lost daughter of Snow White and Prince Charming. But, she is under the Queen’s spell and can’t remember anything of the sort. Emma somewhat believes her son, but is faced with a huge obstacle to full-scale trust: his adopted mother is the mayor of Storybrooke, and also the Evil Queen.

Noble Goals, Bad Heart

What makes this storytelling adventure work well is the fact that the casting is well done. Every character plays their part incredibly well as the actor blends into the character on the screen, and the evil characters are perhaps the best to watch because their characters are the most believable. There is an amount of believability, as no person is completely good or completely evil.

The evil queen/mayor selfishly desires a happy ending for herself. Happiness as her goal is one that we all share in life. But, she doesn’t want anyone else to be happy. The Evil Queen isn’t evil just because she naturally is that way, “She was made evil,” co-creator and executive producer Edward Kitsis states, “In fact, she's more tortured and sad than she is just evil."

She only turns evil because she denies others that same happiness she pursues, and creates an unpleasant town completely devoid of hope except for her own. However, her adopted son brings life back into the town through his uncanny sense of hope.

Photo by Alexander Boden

Similarly, Mr. Gold (or Rumpelstiltskin in the other realm), seeks to gain personal wealth, which carries, in and of itself, no moral weight; but he hoards wealth, taking it too far as his only aim in life. His involvement in the little town of Storybrooke is unending, and he seems to know much more than even the evil queen mayor about the character’s lives. Mr. Gold has a je ne sais quoi about him that makes him incredibly curious to watch. He’s evil, but his cunning and trickster ways provide interest, much different from the selfishness portrayed by the queen.

All in all, I like this show. It has characters you want to watch, with personalities that are intriguing. You root for the good guys, and simply hope the bad guys get caught. However, for me, I enjoy the television show Grimm more. Due to the way Grimm tells the story (in the Germanic style of fairy tale story telling), there is a darkness and realness written into the script and production that makes hope something of a rarity that one wishes to keep whenever it appears. In Once Upon a Time, the viewer is so flooded with hope that it seems less important because it is so ever-present, much like a Disney film. However, I still very much enjoy this series, and I suggest that you tune in to ABC on Sundays at 8.

Verdict: 3.5 out of 5
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Posted by: Andrew Jacobson

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Book Review: The Cave

The Cave by José Saramago, translated by Margaret Jull Costa (New York: Harcourt, Inc., 2002. 320 pp)

José Saramago was a Nobel Prize winning author from Portugal, who passed away at the age of 87 on June 18, 2010. Although Saramago did not receive widespread recognition until he was 60 years old, he has been highly prolific in the years since. Blindness, one of Saramago's most highly regarded books was made into a major motion picture in 2008. He is survived by his wife Pilar Del Rio and a daughter from a previous marriage.

Margaret Jull Costa translates Portuguese and Spanish fiction and poetry. For her work she has won the Portuguese Translation Prize, the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, the Oxford Weidenfeld Translation Prize, and the Times Literary Supplement Translation Prize.

The Perfect Circle

In Plato’s Republic, Socrates expands his theory of forms through the famous allegory of the cave. For Plato and by extension, Socrates, objects existed in two realms: the spiritual and the physical. By definition, the physical realm comprised of imperfect objects; the spiritual realm, on the other hand, contained perfect representations of objects.

As an example, consider a drawn circle. No matter how hard one tries to compose this circle, it will never be perfect. Our hands refuse to remain steady; our pencils or pens meet the paper poorly. Nevertheless, we, by definition, know what a circle is. Each point in the circle is precisely the same distance away from the middle point even if we could never compose such an image in real life.

The Allegory of the Cave

Photo by Puriri deVry

Plato, however, penned the allegory of the cave in order to share the same principles. In this cave, shackled people stare at fire-lit images of real-life objects dancing on the cave wall while the real objects exist outside the cave. Put simply, Plato argues that our world is like this cave and our actions are no different than staring at an ancient moving picture.

Leaning heavily on this metaphor, José Saramago wrote The Cave with an attention to translating the theory of forms to modern life through the lens of work.

Set in an unnamed city, Cipriano Algor is a potter who lives with his daughter, Marta, and his son-in-law, Marçal Gacho in the city’s surrounding countryside. Cipriano molds earthenware in his rustic pottery and exclusively delivers his goods to the Center, a gigantic commercial/residential complex for which Marçal works as a security guard.

An Inquiry into the Value of Work

One day, upon delivering his goods, Cipriano learns that the Center no longer desires his products. Faced with unemployment, Cipriano and Marta devise a new product for the Center to buy: clay figurines. Having received a preliminary order, Cipriano encounters numerous difficulties with his work and his family as they cautiously consider a move to the Center apartments.

With Saramago’s typical meta-narrative style and dense sentence structures comprising multiple-page-long paragraphs, the author ponders the superficiality of overtly consumerist capitalism. With the Center functioning as the typical transnational corporation, and Cipriano as the mom-and-pop shop, The Cave acts as an exploration in the value of work and the dehumanizing elements of major corporations substituting human relationship with bottom-line metrics.

Saramago illustrates the dichotomy between small and big business well when he writes,

“The head of the buying department did not respond immediately, he must have been considering whether it was worth amusing himself further with this kind of cat-and-mouse game, but his position on the Center’s organization chart reminded him that the whole definition and maintenance of hierarchical configurations is based on their being scrupulously respected and never contravened or transgressed, and, of course, the inevitable result of being too free and easy with one’s inferiors or subalterns is to undermine respect and to encourage license, or, to put it more explicitly and unambiguously, it all ends in insubordination, indiscipline and anarchy” (111).

In contrast to this structured hierarchy exhibited by the head of the buying department at the Center lies Cipriano’s pottery. A two person operation at most, the potter labors directly with materials, creating something out of nothing. Despite the beauty in manual labor and the creation of artisan consumer goods, the world is passing Cipriano by.

Saramago writes,

“Cipriano Algor complains and complains, but he does not seem to understand that kneaded clay is no longer stored like this, that it will not be long before the basic ceramics industries of today turn into laboratories with employees in white coats taking notes and with immaculate robots doing all the work” (124).

Photo by Dani Sarda Lizaran

Rightly, Saramago observes the death of manual labor in the developed world. No matter the care one takes in hand making a product, the modern world dictates that the same product can be made cheaper somewhere else.

While some people possess gifts of the mind, others, sadly, carry gifts of the hand. Given contemporary culture, this second set of people is finding their work slowly drying up. For Cipriano, his only choice is to become dependent upon the salary of his son-in-law or to move in with Isaura Madruga, a widow Cipriano fancies.

The Beauty of Meta-Narrative

As with every Saramago novel I have read, I am floored by the author’s mastery of language and the use of meta-narrative within the storyline. For example, Saramago loves pausing to discuss strange occurrences in language.

Consider this example:

“Authoritarian, paralyzing, circular, occasionally elliptical stock phrases, also jocularly referred to as nuggets of wisdom, are a malignant plague, one of the very worst ever to ravage the earth. We say to the confused, Know thyself, as if knowing yourself was not the fifth and most difficult of human arithmetical operations, we say to the apathetic, Where there’s a will, there’s a way, as if the brute realities of the world did not amuse themselves each day by turning that phrase on its head, we say to the indecisive, Begin at the beginning, as if beginning were the clearly visible point of a loosely wound thread and all we had to do was keep pulling until we reached the other end, and as if, between the former and latter, we had held in our hands a smooth, continuous thread with no knots to untie, no snarls to untangle, a complete impossibility in the life of a skein, or indeed, if we may be permitted one more stock phrase, in the skein of life” (56).

With a sense of poetry and impeccable descriptive language, Saramago ponders the absurdity of clichés. In the span of a sentence – yes, a very long sentence – Saramago formulates the absurdity of a stock phrase before he uses it in his narrative.

While only one example, The Cave is littered with these meta-narrative illustrations.

Saramago and Plato on Work

Aesthetic comments aside, The Cave ponders work and what it means to be alive in the modern world. What is work? Is it sculpting with your hands or is it sitting at a desk? Saramago likens this comparison to Plato’s allegory of the cave. Without the capability of truly forming an object with the opportunity to sell it in the open market, are we really any different than the shackled prisoners whose only reality dances in shadows upon the cave walls? If this question interests you, if you find the idea about a literary novel waxing philosophically on work, or if you like Saramago’s particular aesthetic prose, I recommend that you read The Cave.

Verdict: 3.5 out of 5

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Posted by: Donovan Richards

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Christmas Albums 2011: #1 – Christmas

Christmas by Michael Bublé (Reprise Records, 2011. 52 minutes)

Michael Bublé is a Canadian singer and actor, who found wide acclaim interestingly through performances at business parties, and later a wedding. He has won three grammy awards for best traditional pop album, and multiple Juno awards as well. With his 2007 album, Call Me Irresponsible, he reached the top of the Billboard top 200 chart.

Christmas Time!

Christmas time is here, and with it, new Christmas albums. These albums range from good to bad, but a few have caught my attention. So be forewarned; I will be reviewing one album a week through Christmas with an effort to spread the word and good cheer. So, Merry Christmas!

Crooners 

Michael Bublé’s album, Christmas, is one that harkens back to Baby, It's Cold Outside, and many other old crooner Christmas classics. Michael Bublé, in his standard fashion, brings back the croon with a few new tunes as well. He starts the album with “It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas” in an homage to the Bing Crosby classic.

Variety 

Bublé also brings some not-so-classic Christmas tunes into play, including a poppy original tune, “Cold December Night” and Darlene Love’s arrangement of “Christmas (Baby Please Come Home).” While I certainly prefer Bublé when he is singing Sinatra-esque songs, his pop tunes provide Christmas cheer just as well as the older classics.

In addition to these new songs, Bublé invites some well-known talent to join him. The Puppini Sisters sing “Jingle Bells” with him in a doo-wop style much like The Chordettes; Shania Twain joins Bublé in “White Christmas”; and Latin sensation Thalia joins him for “Feliz Navidad”.

Ending 

Michael Bublé ends the album, in my opinion, the best way he could by singing the classic “Ave Maria” with astounding technique, phrasing, and diction. He brings a remarkable voice to a long standing Christmas tradition, and makes this song hauntingly beautiful and a delightful way to end a record.

Christmas Special 

Christmas also acts as an excellent introduction to what will assuredly be an amazing Christmas special airing, tonight, December 6 on NBC at 8PM EST. I hope you get a chance to watch; I surely will.

Christmas contains both tunes that have become engrained in our memories from past Christmases and welcomed new additions. Much like how I keep going back to the crooner Christmas records of old, I foresee myself going back to this album every Christmas. I’m sure with its great variety, talent, and repertoire it will become a classic album for the ages to come. If you love classic Christmas tunes and the crooner style, I recommend Michael Bublé’s Christmas.

Verdict: 4 out of 5
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Posted By:  Andrew Jacobson

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Album Review: Metals

Metals by Feist (Cherrytree Records, 2011. 50 minutes)

Feist is the stage name for Canadian singer-songwriter, Leslie Feist. Having played in bands since she was 15, Feist rose to fame as a member of Toronto-based indie rock group, Broken Social Scene. While touring with the band, she recorded a collection of songs that eventually became her first solo record, Let It Die which won her two Juno Awards. Her second major label release, The Reminder, was certified gold in the U.S. and won her a Juno Award for album of the year. Her latest record, Metals, has received widespread critical acclaim.

Palladium

My wedding ring is composed of palladium. With the chemical symbol Pd and an atomic number of 46, Palladium, the element, is a building block for a wide variety of everyday objects. Not only is the element a representation of my undying love for my wife, it also functions in connector plating in consumer products. Depending on perspective, the same elementary metal is symbolically priceless or a utilitarian means to entertainment.

Similar to the ways we understand Palladium, Feist’s latest record, Metals, explores the nature of core elements by the various and contrasting ways in which we view them. In fact, in an interview with SPIN magazine Feist admits that “the title Metals was partially inspired by 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus, which is about the Spanish Conquistadors' treatment of precious metals, like gold, versus the Aztec Indians' methods. The former forged intricate weapons; the latter decorated their homes and goods in gold.” (SPIN).

The Good and Bad of a Relationship

A closer look at Metals’ production, composition, and lyrics reveals a group of songs detailing the confusion in relationships when each party comprehends them through a different lens.

Such effects provide gritty and dark results, such as the beautiful opening track, “The Bad in Each Other” which illustrates in woeful splendor,

“A good man, and a good woman / Can’t find the good in each other / And a good man, and a good woman / Will bring out the worst in each other / The bad in each other.”

In the song’s narrative, Feist readily admits that neither person in the relationship is at fault. They are both good. Mixing the two together, however, creates a violent chemical reaction like two useful elements fighting over an electron.

The Tension and Answer

Feist also exhibits the dualistic view of objects through the ways in which the music and lyrics relate. In one of the more aggressive songs, “A Commotion”, Feist uses the verse to build tension and the chorus as an answer,

“It flickered to light / It turned broke what was right / It got the roots by the hair / What was no longer there / It blocked out the sun / It climbed up the stairs / And then it slipped through the cracks / I wasn’t watching my back /

A commotion.”

As “A Commotion” illustrates, Feist’s lyrics and melodies offer glimpses of beauty, simplicity, and poetry. Yet, the instruments add tension to the melody with stark rhythms, tense chord progressions, and attentive production values.

In fact, Metals remains, on the whole, true to the Feist sound of old, but at the same time, contributes a more nuanced take to her style. While her previous record portrays a simple and rootsy take to folk music, Metals adds a greater level of detail. Each track supplies subtle atmospheric additions that give Metals its own impeccable signature.

Melodically Sound and Beautiful in Its Subtlety

Aside from the track “Graveyard”, Metals does not carry an overtly pop hit in the vein of “1234” from her previous album The Reminder. Exploring miscommunication and the perils of undefined relationships, Metals has no room for pop accessibility. But, don’t take this statement as a condemnation of Feist’s art.

Metals is melodically sound and beautiful in its subtlety. The record explores elements in their multiplicity of meaning. Palladium is a wedding ring or a circuit board; gold is a weapon or a home decoration; and a relationship is perfect or broken; it always depends on your perspective. I love Metals and consider a contender for album of the year. Do yourself a favor and check it out.

Verdict: 4.5 out of 5

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Posted by: Donovan Richards

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Book Review: The Magicians

The Magicians by Lev Grossman (New York: Penguin Group, 2009. 402pp).

Lev Grossman is the senior writer and book critic for TIME. Among several notable publications, he has written for The New York Times, Wired, and The Wall Street Journal. At only forty-two years of age, he is beginning to gain wide acclaim for his work in TIME magazine as well as his novels.

Doubt and Humanity 

I love fantasy novels. I find that they provide a way of escape from a world filled with some terrible things. In fact, I re-read The Chronicles of Narnia every summer, and have done so since I was about fifteen years old. I’ve also read the Harry Potter novels, and loved every moment.

Unlike Harry Potter, Quentin (the protagonist) of The Magicians gets snatched into the magical realm just before college, and as a result is a little behind the curve. Fantasy aficionados saw Harry Potter go through magical high school, and with this book they see Quentin attend magical college. When Quentin is accepted for a particular adept magic trick which actually and unknowingly uses real magic, his reaction is one to be expected.

“Part of him, the part he trusted least, wanted to leap on this idea like a puppy on a ball. But in light of everything else that had ever happened to him, in his entire life, he checked himself. He’d spent too long being disappointed by the world – he’d spend so many years pining for something like this, some proof that the real world wasn’t the only world, and coping with the overwhelming evidence that it in fact was. He wasn’t going to be suckered in just like that. It was like finding a clue that somebody you’d buried and mourned wasn’t really dead after all” (37).

The author portrays Quentin as a real human being; he draws his themes from the aspiration to escape the monotony of this world. Quentin just doesn’t believe this change is happening to him, and he fights the reality that he’s becoming a magician throughout the novel. His reluctance to accept this truth makes his character believable because magic is, by definition, extraordinary, and we, too, would act similarly given the same circumstances.

Photo by Dmitri B.

Once accepted into college, Quentin attends classes, studies, and makes friends, and is involved in extra-curricular activities as well. Those at Brakebills College of Magic play an inter-collegial game called welters. Similar to NCAA sports, colleges of magic compete for supremacy in welters, much like in Harry Potter and the game of quidditch. Quentin’s team, obviously making fun of Harry Potter, does not take the sport seriously.

“‘Hang on,’ he said. ‘Gotta get my quidditch costume. I mean uniform. I mean welters’” (129).

After college, life becomes a series of monotonous parties and frequent sex. But, soon a forgotten friend from college greets Quentin and invites him to travel with him to what he thought was a fictional land named “Fillory”.

Fillory 

In The Magicians, Quentin and his group of friends religiously read a collection of stories on the land of “Fillory” much like I have my annual Narnia readings. These books on "Fillory" are famous, and children and nerdy adults alike read them for entertainment. Quentin loves the novels and, once accepted into the college at Brakebills, he doesn’t lose his interest in them. Just like my Lion, Witch, and the Wardrobe binges during the summer, Quentin delves into the Fillory novels with great intensity. Much like in The Chronicles of Narnia, there's even a requirement for two queens and kings to rule the land from a magnificent white castle on the coast.

“As he usually did when he was stuck at home, he went on a Fillory binge. The old 1970s-era covers looked more and more dated every time he saw them, with their psychedelic Yellow Submarine palette, and on a couple of them the covers had come off completely and had been tucked back between the pages as bookmarks. But the world inside the books was as fresh and vital as ever, unfaded and unironized by time” (167).

Quentin also wants his own Fillory-like adventure. But fears he never will encounter such fantastical events in such a mundane world. The professors around Quentin try to remind him that he will never really have an adventure, and that magic can be quite boring.

“‘You are not going on a mystical adventure here, Quentin. This process will be long and painful and humiliating and very, very’ – he practically shouted the word – ‘boring’ ” (144).

Familiar Adventure 

Photo by Adam Foster

With super-obvious foreshadowing, Quentin and company finally travel to Fillory, which turns out to be not fictional at all. The group wants the adventure, and they get it; only to be reminded by the equivalent of Aslan, a ram named Ember that the magicians should not use other worlds as a playground for an adventure. Perhaps their own adventure can be found in their own world.

“‘I am sorry you came here,’ Ember said. ‘Children of Earth. No one asked you to come. I am sorry that our world is not the paradise you were looking for. But it was not created for your entertainment. Fillory’ – the old ram’s jowls shook – ‘is not a theme park, for you and your friends to play dress-up in, with swords and crowns’” (351).

There’s a lesson learned here, and Quentin takes it to heart: You may look for paradise and never find it, but you must be okay with who you are, and with whatever may happen along the way. Quentin loses lovers, friends, and confidence. But, toward the end of the story, he finds redemption. He meets his heroes, fights great enemies, and has the adventure he always wanted.

There’s humor, reality, seriousness, sex, anger, fights, drunkenness, collegiality, adventure, mockery, and suspense all present in The Magicians. If you like fantasy novels, read this book. If you don’t like fantasy novels and want to read a complete mockery of fantasy novels, read this book. The Magicians is a fantastic book that you can’t put down if you tried, and one that once you’re done will undoubtedly re-read every summer.

Verdict: 5 out of 5
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Posted by: Andrew Jacobson

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