The Magicians by Lev Grossman

Lev Grossman's The Magicians has been called "Harry Potter for grownups", which is accurate in terms of page-turnability (high) and some similar plot elements, like a magic school and a protagonist whose family is, while not dead, not exactly the warm cozy center of his existence.

However, forget about Hogwarts; by the time you get over the idea that there's a magical prep school right in upstate New York, you'll have come to realize that The Magicians is much more dependent on C.S. Lewis's "Narnia" books (The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, et cetera). I really don't want to give anything away, but I will clarify that it's not any kind of unseemly plagiarism; it's a peculiar homage to the reality that fantasy worlds can take on in the collective imagination, especially when they're planted young.

The story is very well-structured, its elements coming into play in different ways as you move forward. Quentin Coldwater, the teen-aged protagonist, is abruptly rescued from his dreary life in Brooklyn by a note from a murdered man, packaged with a lost manuscript from Quentin's favorite boyhood fantasy series. The note brings him to Brakebills College for Magical Pedagogy, a place peculiarly British in its affectations despite its location. The school environment is fascinating and fully-realized, and populated with fusty professors whose independent lives are glimpsed by the teens like landmarks of adulthood through a veil of hormones and alcohol.

Quentin's quest to find a place, or a way of being, or another person that can truly make him happy is far more difficult than learning magic; finally it brings him face to face with the person he always wished he really was, and costs him nearly everything. What's left, of course, is the rest of his life. I will leave you on that hopefully mysterious note-- click here to reserve The Magicians in our catalog.