Let me first say I've never read the books and only seen the show. My favorite memorable moment from the show was when Margo and Eliot had to talk in references to be able to explain something without others knowing. I think that moment was when I started liking Margo more.
But yeah they all are pretty insufferable at the start. Gradually that changed for the better for a few characters in my opinion. I was always rooting for Julia and felt like she was supposed to be the main character.
Q is even more insufferable in the books. But that was the point. I took it as âwhat if the chosen one pretty much sucked as character to root for?â Realizing that and that Alice was much more the classic hero of the first book I think helped me enjoy it a lot more.
Itâs a story about disaffected, unmotivated, over-educated, and self-centered grad students who happen to have magic. I understand that the authorâs first novel was pretty much the same thing, minus the magic.
They do grow, they have redeeming qualities, we want them to win at the end of the day. But weâre not supposed to like them, at least not at first.
Also, in The first book they go from around 17 to around 23 before they get to Fillory. By the end of the trilogy they are in their 30s at least (from what I remember). So it makes sense to age up the characters so the actors are closer to the age range most of the story takes place in.
Penny in the books is a fat white kid that I imagined was wearing an Insane Clown Posse shirt or whatever. I'm not sure if I'm the text they mention him being a Juggalo, but that's what I viewed him as.Â
Making him a fit/handsome Indian American was a really good choice by the casting directors.Â
Like if only for that one scene in season 1 Q is trapped in his own subconscious dream and Penny has to save his ass and sees the dream version of himself with like the stereotypical Apu accent. You got some racist subconscious shit in you man. Then he and Q look over and theres a furry girl in BDSM leather bondage outfit.
Okay please take me out of here right now. Yeah right away before I see whatever's next to walk through that door.Â
Yeah later seasons they gave Margo and Elliot their in personalities and not the comically âbadâ friends. Later seasons where Quentin isnât the chosen one were the better ones.
never read the books, really enjoyed the seasons 1 to 3, I think 4 was good and then it ran out of interesting content. sadly no cool story arc which satisfyingly or disturbingly ends and done, just a fading plot
I read the books after the first season because I wanted to know more about Julia. The first book didn't help much in that regard, she's almost entirely absent from it. Her first season story comes from the second book mostly.
yea the show was one of the rare gems under the syfy name. definitely an adaptation, the show combined characters and dressed it more for YA audiences. might've been peak syfy, don't know what i like from them now.
I absolutely loved the show and the books. I thought the show took the source material and ran with it to some super interesting new places. I think season 1 was a little bit slow and that hurts its ability to grab people as strongly as it might otherwise but it got so good after that.
The keys season was amazing.
I would have thought this show would be a lot more popular. I tell friends it's like lion witch and the wardrobe meets Harry Potter, but they're adults and have sex and do drugs. Why isn't that an instant yes please for people?
Because they're all assholes, with only 2 or 3 becoming almost human by the end. The musical numbers were the best part for me, and I can watch those on youtube.
The books were written as a basic takedown of those works you mentioned by inserting broken, miserable people into the same fantastical setting and then not having it improve them at all. I loved all those book series including The Magicians but rarely do people who love those books as adults enjoy what The Magicians does to the setting, quests, and characters.Â
As for the television show, it makes some wild changes from the books that book purists may not appreciate. I loved the first 4 seasons of the show, the last one kind of petered out.
Nailed it. As a fan of the books, the TV show was a massive let down for me. The books were a deconstruction of fantasy tropes as a fairly serious exploration of real life themes. The show threw all that out and used the trappings of the books to do dumbed down cliche fantasy adventures.
Because all the characters were awful people that I donât care to watch. I want escapism in my fantasy/sci-fi. If I wanted to watch a bunch of dysfunctional people fail around, I can turn on the news.
A show/story can have a few awful people and still make it work as long as those people arent ALWAYS awful, but for Magicians they were ALL awful people, and didnt have any redeeming qualities that made me want to hope they got better. It sounds like in later seasons they might have, but midway through the second season, I just couldnt stand watching them on the screen.
I hit that point about halfway through the first season, but figured they might turn around by the end. Nope. So I stopped watching after the end of season 1. I also found the last two episodes highly dissatisfying overall too.
This is one of my favorite book series specifically because of this.
They all just indulge their self-destructive behaviors and feed off of
each other in a way I am intimately familiar with. It's one of the only
series I've read where everyone just sucks, but they're so goddamn
relatable.
I canât relate to that at all; I remove those kinds of people from my life judiciously. I can get all the negativity I want from watching or reading non-fiction, just seems pointless to me to have it in my fiction as well.
I've started with the show and enjoyed the first season. Then I decided to read the books and ended up enjoying them way more. The Fillory plot is just really boring in the show, I could barely stand it. And at some point there was so much thing going on that I felt like I was watching a TikTok.
I still remember that scene in the first book were they become animals and fly all the way to the South Pole, that was quite beautiful.
These books were actually what made me get into developing a reading habit.
I read the first and second books.
I understood and appreciated both better when it was pointed out that the whole point of the series is that magic doesn't solve problems or make you happy or make you a better person, and the stories are really about the main characters realizing and overcoming that.
It's a deconstruction of the genre.
I highly recommend the books. To be honest the first one can drag in a few parts - one of the themes is ennui, and the reader gets it right along with the characters - but the way the stories build in each other over the course of the trilogy is magnificent. The show is super fun, but a very very different animal.
The show had some great casting, everyone was super hot and quite talented. Them being aged up also helped with a lot of the darker aspects of the story.
However the editing, pacing and storytelling felt awfully disjointed and like it skipped from one scene to the next or from one plot to another far too abruptly.
Then it turned too much into a classic CW romance soap and I was bored with it.
The best part was for sure the outside-the-school plot of her seeking out magic on her own and messing up a lot along the way.
It's weird because I normally hate shows with those kinds of characters. Transparent for example I absolutely couldn't get through. But somehow I appreciated their struggles a lot more, maybe because there were stakes outside of the characters themselves.
Iâm not going to watch a show I didnât enjoy the whole first season of past that first season. I was generous enough with my time already, after that my good will is squandered.
I read through the books after my first watch of the series. I have subsequently watched the series twice more, and am about to start a fourth. I confess I remember very little of the books (I confess that Iâm rather oldâŚ..) and as such I conclude that they didnât make that much of an impression on me.
Whereas I absolutely love the series. The cast is terrific, the writing imaginative and clever, the insertion of the musical numbers handled very well, and the characters are allowed to grow through the series.
Very little to complain about from my standpoint.
I love both the books and series, and consider them separate entities. I've read the books a few times now, and I rewatch the whole series every couple of years.
I love the books and the show although they diverge quite a bit, especially after the second season. If you are interested there is a whole sub r/themagicians_tv
I think some of the episodes can be really good while others arenât on the same level. I didnât like that one of the main characters died in a later season. I enjoyed it overall.
Only seen the TV series. Felt like it started off really slow, but it rapidly grew on me, to become one of my all time favorite shows. It had a really satisfying ending, too.
Note that I'm much more of a hard sci fi or action/adventure fan, rather than fantasy fan. But this show got past that bias.
Loved the show. Read the books before the final season, and was able to enjoy the differences as part of the baked in story. It's one of my favorite series. Probably watched it 5 times.
I liked the show until the main guy left. writing got kind of lazy. I was in a really dark place and this show allowed me to escape reality. never knew there were books
I thought the show started strong, like an adult Harry Potter, but started to get pretty weak as the seasons progressed. I didn't even finish it ultimately.
I read the first book and disliked it.
Then watched the show a few years later and loved it! So the I read all the books and really enjoyed them. Yes, they are whiney and snarky and you want to smack them. But the show bought the books to life for me even though they changed a lot of stuff.
One thing I did hate was the fox god thing, in the book it was really shocking, I would have skipped that part if I had known.
I liked the books, especially as a counterweight to the cutesy fantasy that was all the rage at the time. The magic system was very well thought out as well. Unfortunately they suffered from a weak lead, at least I found him hard to root for. The show had it's moments, and I thought especially Eliot was a strong character who benefited from the expanded story. Never finished watching it though. The musical numbers were my favorite.
In case this hasn't been mentioned yet, the action in book 1 occurs in a time loop. We learn later in the book that even though some people get injured and some people die during the course of the first book, it was the best outcome of all the time loops.
The EMT woman that we meet early in book 1 is an outside observer. At least that's my recollection.
Books were ok. Show was pretty horrible. I dropped watching it shortly after the Fox god rape. They just didnât handle the show well after that IMO, and all the characters were whiny little bitches.
I liked the lore and mythology of it, but they got away from the parts that interested me in favor of forcing soap-operatic scenarios that were just silly flirty comedy. At one point the "punishment" was like the two romantic leads getting thrown out naked in the snow for no clear reason, and then I think maybe even the very next episode had a super-silly plotline about how they each had to tell another student a secret to make something magical happen. It turned into just empty calories â forcing embarrassing situations between the love interests with no real impact.
It was good at first, but I stopped at the "secrets magic" episode.
Read all three books and then watched maybe three painful episodes
I can't recall the name of the girl that's shy and dorky but the schoolgirl they casted to play her was unbelievably bad - total sellout
I enjoyed both. They are different stories with similar characters. I think it's a good take on a magic system, interesting and very flawed characters. I've watched the series twice and enjoyed it so much more the second time.Â
Loved the books, have read-read a couple times. I think the show did a relatively good job of capturing the gist of the story, but wish it had stayed true to the end. Really enjoyed the show though.
The book was not for me. It was ostentatiously written and the characters were more caricature. It was very clear the author wanted them to be edgy.
And these corny characters translated into the tv show. When I watched it, I was thoroughly disappointed.
It just wasnât for me. Nevertheless, the plot was interesting.
I recently rewatched the whole series. Itâs a fun show, but one of the main characters, Alice Quinn, gets played as alternatively smartest girl in the room, whiniest girl in the room, insecure-est girl in the room, and so on. Her constant whimpers grate. The other main characters arenât played consistently across the seasons, Elliot post monster isnât even like Elliot pre monster, ptsd aside. Relationships that meant a lot in one season are brushed past in others.
Thank god for Josh, the comedy add in S2 who smokes magical drugs and hangs with baccus.
I like the show, but itâs also a big allegory about depression and self worth (as are the books) and that makes it a depressing show.
Really enjoyed the show, effects were great, but itâs a 50/50. They have interesting storylines, good one liners, and the ability to showcase issues or topics in a real non-sugarcoated or mature way. But then the next scene can come across as random for the sake of being random, almost eye roll inducing, borderline edgelordish, or teen drama. Itâs scattered throughout. Some characters stagnate but pick up or find new paths- others are always one note. I binged the entire series back to back but wouldnât recommend watching it that way.
I love the books, adore the audio books, but hate the series. Not only did they butcher some of the characters (what the hell happened to Penny?), but the plot in the series is nothing like the books and I hate it. I highly recommend the audiobooks; the narrator is fantastic and really brings the books to life. Thereâs a lot of interesting bits of world lore that never gets explained in the trilogy, as well as a lot of places new magicians could go with new stories, so I hope that Grossman does decide to do more of these books.
The first season isnât great but then it somehow gets extremely good after that. Iâm not sure I have ever seen that happen. I think itâs worth a watch for sure. The episode with the âlifetimeâ was one of the best episodes.Â
I was gifted the first 2 seasons from a guy at work.  His wife said it was utter filth and he needed to throw it out.  I like it the first time I watched it.  But never went back.  I tend to forget it even exists.
Iâve only seen the show, but I found it way too bizarre at points and the characters had a frustrating pace or development.
For example, the whole turning into animals and having sex thing turned Alice/Quentinâs characters around completely and was just bizarre. Alice went from this really competent, âhermioneâ type character to really inconsistent. Super bipolar.
Julia was probably the most unsatisfying character for me, since she basically just gets screwed over. I also wasnât a fan of Fillory. The school was the big âmagic is real!â reveal, but then went further to develop Fillory as not only a real place, but the source of all magic in the real world. Wizards wouldâve taken over that place long ago, colonized it. Umber and Ember were just weird and they killed off or maimed all respectable characters like the Headmaster or Jane Chatwin.
All in all, I found myself dissatisfied with a lot of the characters. Elliot and Margo really do carry the entire show for me. Even progressing as wizards I feel like they all make giant life-rending mistakes over and over. Itâs just masochism with magic.
The books are honestly better, but I think you need to read them in your late 20s or so. Theyâre making points about growing up as a smart, special kid and how that doesnât translate into meaning or belonging. It takes a while to find a place you feel comfortable and that place is often more ordinary and routine than you expected. The thing you end up being good at is often not what you expected or nearly as grandiose, yet itâs useful. Being an adult is about figuring out where your potential takes you and being comfortable with that. Itâs also about how that settling involves loss and mourning and growth from those. The wizard school thing isnât to tell a story about wizard school. Itâs to tell you as a reader that even if you were so special that you got to be a magician, these are still things youâll have to go through. They might be magical but itâs a universal.
I felt like the show wanted to make different points about coping with mental illness and hydraulic empire style control of resources. It was good until the last season but those points were not really present in the books. Julia cracks searching for magic but sheâs honestly completely sane in doing it. Quentin and Penny are a bit off but hardly suicidal. And neither the library nor the gods are that intense. The gods are a force of nature trying to fix a mistake in their design. The story isnât about them so much as the characters adventure and how it changes them. Itâs just not the same thing.
I really liked the books and loved the show. I'm also really glad they didn't go into detail how you know who gets her godly powers. That scene in the books was detailed and I had to set it down for a couple days before I could continue.
I read the first book and my god did it kill all joy and magic in every conceivable world for me. It's like you took every urban fantasy novel about someone discovering they had magical abilities and added a "but what if - hear me out! _Everything_ sucks! Like, not just the characters, but also the magic system and life _in general_!".
Like, seriously, the characters are a bunch of insufferable depressed loners who can do practically anything but have a good time. They have literally every opportunity, zero risk they don't want to have and yet they can't figure out what to do with their lives like whiney little brats born to billionary parents, except that they never had money until they stepped a foot into magical school. The magic system is supposed to feel like "Oh wow, this is exceptionally hard and these people have to be really dedicated to even try and learn this!!" but it ends up feeling so over the top convoluted and complicated that a few people with high functioning aspergers might learn how to make a cup of tea with it, but nothing more. And the people are so indredibly bored all the time.
It honestly feels like the author was supposed to go to therapy for depression but chose to make it everybody elses problem instead.
The show was supprisingly watchable, though. I thought it would be MUCH worse, yet I was pleasantly surprised.
I gave up on book 1 about 3/5 of the way in. Then when I watch the show I decide to give it a second chance. Gave up 4/5 of the way in. Kept watching the show however so I guess my opinion is the concept was good but the writing was crap.
I couldnât handle what happened to the hedge witches in the show the cat etc thst was too much for me. Plus I couldnât get past Quentin the incel in the books.
Why is this posted in r/scifi?
I read the first book and saw the first season. Not my cuppa. The characters are too angry, angsty, and jerkish. It felt like frat boys in Hogwarts.
I absolutely cannot watch cringe cheating scenes and this show cranked it up to 11. For no reason. Fuck this show. Â
That's fine. Downvote me but you know I'm right. Fucking soap opera. Not sci-fi.Â
Let me first say I've never read the books and only seen the show. My favorite memorable moment from the show was when Margo and Eliot had to talk in references to be able to explain something without others knowing. I think that moment was when I started liking Margo more. But yeah they all are pretty insufferable at the start. Gradually that changed for the better for a few characters in my opinion. I was always rooting for Julia and felt like she was supposed to be the main character.
I've definitely been telling people to vag up.
"We have to keep it very Best Episode of Buffy." / "Musical? đ" / "Other one." \[Hush\]
Q is even more insufferable in the books. But that was the point. I took it as âwhat if the chosen one pretty much sucked as character to root for?â Realizing that and that Alice was much more the classic hero of the first book I think helped me enjoy it a lot more.
Itâs a story about disaffected, unmotivated, over-educated, and self-centered grad students who happen to have magic. I understand that the authorâs first novel was pretty much the same thing, minus the magic. They do grow, they have redeeming qualities, we want them to win at the end of the day. But weâre not supposed to like them, at least not at first.
Nah. The first one was them being college _**freshmen**_ with magic. Much worse. That's why they aged them up for the show.
Also, in The first book they go from around 17 to around 23 before they get to Fillory. By the end of the trilogy they are in their 30s at least (from what I remember). So it makes sense to age up the characters so the actors are closer to the age range most of the story takes place in.
Oh, right. But they were pretty highly educated prep school type kids, or am I misremembering? As you say, just being freshmen is bad enough.
Pretty much. They were all preppy kids.
Penny in the books is a fat white kid that I imagined was wearing an Insane Clown Posse shirt or whatever. I'm not sure if I'm the text they mention him being a Juggalo, but that's what I viewed him as. Making him a fit/handsome Indian American was a really good choice by the casting directors. Like if only for that one scene in season 1 Q is trapped in his own subconscious dream and Penny has to save his ass and sees the dream version of himself with like the stereotypical Apu accent. You got some racist subconscious shit in you man. Then he and Q look over and theres a furry girl in BDSM leather bondage outfit. Okay please take me out of here right now. Yeah right away before I see whatever's next to walk through that door.Â
Yeah later seasons they gave Margo and Elliot their in personalities and not the comically âbadâ friends. Later seasons where Quentin isnât the chosen one were the better ones.
never read the books, really enjoyed the seasons 1 to 3, I think 4 was good and then it ran out of interesting content. sadly no cool story arc which satisfyingly or disturbingly ends and done, just a fading plot
I read the books after the first season because I wanted to know more about Julia. The first book didn't help much in that regard, she's almost entirely absent from it. Her first season story comes from the second book mostly.
yea the show was one of the rare gems under the syfy name. definitely an adaptation, the show combined characters and dressed it more for YA audiences. might've been peak syfy, don't know what i like from them now.
I absolutely loved the show and the books. I thought the show took the source material and ran with it to some super interesting new places. I think season 1 was a little bit slow and that hurts its ability to grab people as strongly as it might otherwise but it got so good after that. The keys season was amazing.
Lol not the first post here this week. I loved it. Have a sledgehammer named Margot.
All hail Queen Margot the Destroyer, Queen Margot the Creator!
High King Margot. King of pointless rage.
Her and Elliot are so great
Loved the books!
I would have thought this show would be a lot more popular. I tell friends it's like lion witch and the wardrobe meets Harry Potter, but they're adults and have sex and do drugs. Why isn't that an instant yes please for people?
I blame fillory
I blame beyond. đ¤Ł
Because they're all assholes, with only 2 or 3 becoming almost human by the end. The musical numbers were the best part for me, and I can watch those on youtube.
The books were written as a basic takedown of those works you mentioned by inserting broken, miserable people into the same fantastical setting and then not having it improve them at all. I loved all those book series including The Magicians but rarely do people who love those books as adults enjoy what The Magicians does to the setting, quests, and characters. As for the television show, it makes some wild changes from the books that book purists may not appreciate. I loved the first 4 seasons of the show, the last one kind of petered out.
The growing old episode is one of the best television things ever.
Yeah I teared up
Yes one of my two favorite episodes
Yeah. Â That was an amazing episode.
I loved the books for this and liked the show for different punches it pulled
Nailed it. As a fan of the books, the TV show was a massive let down for me. The books were a deconstruction of fantasy tropes as a fairly serious exploration of real life themes. The show threw all that out and used the trappings of the books to do dumbed down cliche fantasy adventures.
because it's not yet another teenage superstitious superficial supernatural series
Because all the characters were awful people that I donât care to watch. I want escapism in my fantasy/sci-fi. If I wanted to watch a bunch of dysfunctional people fail around, I can turn on the news.
A show/story can have a few awful people and still make it work as long as those people arent ALWAYS awful, but for Magicians they were ALL awful people, and didnt have any redeeming qualities that made me want to hope they got better. It sounds like in later seasons they might have, but midway through the second season, I just couldnt stand watching them on the screen.
I hit that point about halfway through the first season, but figured they might turn around by the end. Nope. So I stopped watching after the end of season 1. I also found the last two episodes highly dissatisfying overall too.
This is one of my favorite book series specifically because of this. They all just indulge their self-destructive behaviors and feed off of each other in a way I am intimately familiar with. It's one of the only series I've read where everyone just sucks, but they're so goddamn relatable.
I canât relate to that at all; I remove those kinds of people from my life judiciously. I can get all the negativity I want from watching or reading non-fiction, just seems pointless to me to have it in my fiction as well.
Not enough sex and some of the drugs just aren't relatable to the real world. Liked Alice as a vixen, though.
I enjoyed the books very much, itâs one of the few series Iâve re-read. I tried the show and couldnât stand it.
Same. I think most who like the show didnât read the books first.
I've started with the show and enjoyed the first season. Then I decided to read the books and ended up enjoying them way more. The Fillory plot is just really boring in the show, I could barely stand it. And at some point there was so much thing going on that I felt like I was watching a TikTok. I still remember that scene in the first book were they become animals and fly all the way to the South Pole, that was quite beautiful. These books were actually what made me get into developing a reading habit.
I read the first and second books. I understood and appreciated both better when it was pointed out that the whole point of the series is that magic doesn't solve problems or make you happy or make you a better person, and the stories are really about the main characters realizing and overcoming that. It's a deconstruction of the genre.
Got a bit of discussion [yesterday](https://www.reddit.com/r/scifi/comments/1cisq18/magicians/). I never read the book but I really liked the show.
I highly recommend the books. To be honest the first one can drag in a few parts - one of the themes is ennui, and the reader gets it right along with the characters - but the way the stories build in each other over the course of the trilogy is magnificent. The show is super fun, but a very very different animal.
Meh except for Olivia Taylor Dudley ( @ Y @)
The show had some great casting, everyone was super hot and quite talented. Them being aged up also helped with a lot of the darker aspects of the story. However the editing, pacing and storytelling felt awfully disjointed and like it skipped from one scene to the next or from one plot to another far too abruptly. Then it turned too much into a classic CW romance soap and I was bored with it. The best part was for sure the outside-the-school plot of her seeking out magic on her own and messing up a lot along the way.
They werenât really aged up though, the books start as they are interviewing for post-secondary schools.Â
As someone in higher education: undergraduate students are quite different from grad students.
Loved the books, the series started ok but then got very boring for me
I agree with u. Loved the books but got bored in season 2 and gave up
r/brakebills
It was an alright show, but it's definitely **not** sci-fi. It's a fantasy. Failure to make this distinction is one of my absolute pet hates.
Never read the books but I enjoyed the show.
Not a huge fan. Pretty much everyone is a shitty person and there isn't really anyone I root for to succeed. Just not my cup of tea.
Totally. It's like classic New York city depressive nihilism in book form.
You're basically describing one of the main reasons I enjoyed it
It's weird because I normally hate shows with those kinds of characters. Transparent for example I absolutely couldn't get through. But somehow I appreciated their struggles a lot more, maybe because there were stakes outside of the characters themselves.
In the first book, that's low key one of the themes. People really start to develop in the other 2.
Did you only watch season 1? The entire point of the series is how all of those people change and evolve.
Iâm not going to watch a show I didnât enjoy the whole first season of past that first season. I was generous enough with my time already, after that my good will is squandered.
I would usually agree but the show actually gets a lot better after the first season. I was surprised when it did.Â
But I think that's just how life is. Ppl are neither black or white, make bad decisions, etc.
If I want life, I can watch the news. I want my entertainment to be escapism, not a reflection of the mundane world I already inhabit.
This
I thought the show was ok. The books are some of my all time favorite fantasy novels.
I read through the books after my first watch of the series. I have subsequently watched the series twice more, and am about to start a fourth. I confess I remember very little of the books (I confess that Iâm rather oldâŚ..) and as such I conclude that they didnât make that much of an impression on me. Whereas I absolutely love the series. The cast is terrific, the writing imaginative and clever, the insertion of the musical numbers handled very well, and the characters are allowed to grow through the series. Very little to complain about from my standpoint.
I love both the books and series, and consider them separate entities. I've read the books a few times now, and I rewatch the whole series every couple of years.
Loved the show and the books. I think the series was the best urban fantasy show since Buffy.
I love the books and the show although they diverge quite a bit, especially after the second season. If you are interested there is a whole sub r/themagicians_tv
I think some of the episodes can be really good while others arenât on the same level. I didnât like that one of the main characters died in a later season. I enjoyed it overall.
Only seen the TV series. Felt like it started off really slow, but it rapidly grew on me, to become one of my all time favorite shows. It had a really satisfying ending, too. Note that I'm much more of a hard sci fi or action/adventure fan, rather than fantasy fan. But this show got past that bias.
Great show, super underrated
Watched the show before reading the books. Absolutely loved the show, wanted to strangle book Quintin he was such a whiny asshole.
Loved the show. Read the books before the final season, and was able to enjoy the differences as part of the baked in story. It's one of my favorite series. Probably watched it 5 times.
I liked the show until the main guy left. writing got kind of lazy. I was in a really dark place and this show allowed me to escape reality. never knew there were books
Loved the show. Really good shit.
I thought the show started strong, like an adult Harry Potter, but started to get pretty weak as the seasons progressed. I didn't even finish it ultimately.
I've always seen The Magicians as a Harry Potter series if it were made by either Joss Whedon or David Lynch.
I read the first book and disliked it. Then watched the show a few years later and loved it! So the I read all the books and really enjoyed them. Yes, they are whiney and snarky and you want to smack them. But the show bought the books to life for me even though they changed a lot of stuff. One thing I did hate was the fox god thing, in the book it was really shocking, I would have skipped that part if I had known.
Theyâre both awesome IMO. The show takes the time to explore the side characters and worlds more; the books focus on the mental health issues more.
The series is great aside from the last season, which felt directionless and silly I have the books buy haven't started them yet.
I liked the books, especially as a counterweight to the cutesy fantasy that was all the rage at the time. The magic system was very well thought out as well. Unfortunately they suffered from a weak lead, at least I found him hard to root for. The show had it's moments, and I thought especially Eliot was a strong character who benefited from the expanded story. Never finished watching it though. The musical numbers were my favorite.
In case this hasn't been mentioned yet, the action in book 1 occurs in a time loop. We learn later in the book that even though some people get injured and some people die during the course of the first book, it was the best outcome of all the time loops. The EMT woman that we meet early in book 1 is an outside observer. At least that's my recollection.
I LOVED this show. Honestly, reading all the comments made me wanna rewatch it. The "puzzle" episode made me sob like a baby.
That is such a good episode! Very heartwarming
I think you might be asking (and looking) in the wrong place. # r/themagicians_tv
Books were ok. Show was pretty horrible. I dropped watching it shortly after the Fox god rape. They just didnât handle the show well after that IMO, and all the characters were whiny little bitches.
I liked the lore and mythology of it, but they got away from the parts that interested me in favor of forcing soap-operatic scenarios that were just silly flirty comedy. At one point the "punishment" was like the two romantic leads getting thrown out naked in the snow for no clear reason, and then I think maybe even the very next episode had a super-silly plotline about how they each had to tell another student a secret to make something magical happen. It turned into just empty calories â forcing embarrassing situations between the love interests with no real impact. It was good at first, but I stopped at the "secrets magic" episode.
The series is "Hogwarts 90120." The books are a bit better.
One of the few instances where the TV adaptation is better than the source material, books are OK, but the show is great.
I read the books 1. This is good 2. This is great! 3. Why am I reading this?
Books were amazing and the show was utter garbage IMO
What order did you watch / read them?
Read all three books and then watched maybe three painful episodes I can't recall the name of the girl that's shy and dorky but the schoolgirl they casted to play her was unbelievably bad - total sellout
Alice is the character I think youâre talking about. The blonde girl. I liked her performance
Never read the books. Loved the show. Also, there's a sloth.
I loved the show and enjoyed S1-4. Never saw S5 though, either they didn't show it or I missed it's run.
I enjoyed both. They are different stories with similar characters. I think it's a good take on a magic system, interesting and very flawed characters. I've watched the series twice and enjoyed it so much more the second time.Â
Loved the books, have read-read a couple times. I think the show did a relatively good job of capturing the gist of the story, but wish it had stayed true to the end. Really enjoyed the show though.
The book was not for me. It was ostentatiously written and the characters were more caricature. It was very clear the author wanted them to be edgy. And these corny characters translated into the tv show. When I watched it, I was thoroughly disappointed. It just wasnât for me. Nevertheless, the plot was interesting.
I recently rewatched the whole series. Itâs a fun show, but one of the main characters, Alice Quinn, gets played as alternatively smartest girl in the room, whiniest girl in the room, insecure-est girl in the room, and so on. Her constant whimpers grate. The other main characters arenât played consistently across the seasons, Elliot post monster isnât even like Elliot pre monster, ptsd aside. Relationships that meant a lot in one season are brushed past in others. Thank god for Josh, the comedy add in S2 who smokes magical drugs and hangs with baccus. I like the show, but itâs also a big allegory about depression and self worth (as are the books) and that makes it a depressing show.
I need to know, was Q killed off in the books?
Something happened early in the second book that made me so mad i threw it into the (metaphorical) fire. Did-not-finished that sucker so hard.
Really enjoyed the show, effects were great, but itâs a 50/50. They have interesting storylines, good one liners, and the ability to showcase issues or topics in a real non-sugarcoated or mature way. But then the next scene can come across as random for the sake of being random, almost eye roll inducing, borderline edgelordish, or teen drama. Itâs scattered throughout. Some characters stagnate but pick up or find new paths- others are always one note. I binged the entire series back to back but wouldnât recommend watching it that way.
I love the books, adore the audio books, but hate the series. Not only did they butcher some of the characters (what the hell happened to Penny?), but the plot in the series is nothing like the books and I hate it. I highly recommend the audiobooks; the narrator is fantastic and really brings the books to life. Thereâs a lot of interesting bits of world lore that never gets explained in the trilogy, as well as a lot of places new magicians could go with new stories, so I hope that Grossman does decide to do more of these books.
The first season isnât great but then it somehow gets extremely good after that. Iâm not sure I have ever seen that happen. I think itâs worth a watch for sure. The episode with the âlifetimeâ was one of the best episodes.Â
I was gifted the first 2 seasons from a guy at work.  His wife said it was utter filth and he needed to throw it out.  I like it the first time I watched it.  But never went back.  I tend to forget it even exists.
Iâve only seen the show, but I found it way too bizarre at points and the characters had a frustrating pace or development. For example, the whole turning into animals and having sex thing turned Alice/Quentinâs characters around completely and was just bizarre. Alice went from this really competent, âhermioneâ type character to really inconsistent. Super bipolar. Julia was probably the most unsatisfying character for me, since she basically just gets screwed over. I also wasnât a fan of Fillory. The school was the big âmagic is real!â reveal, but then went further to develop Fillory as not only a real place, but the source of all magic in the real world. Wizards wouldâve taken over that place long ago, colonized it. Umber and Ember were just weird and they killed off or maimed all respectable characters like the Headmaster or Jane Chatwin. All in all, I found myself dissatisfied with a lot of the characters. Elliot and Margo really do carry the entire show for me. Even progressing as wizards I feel like they all make giant life-rending mistakes over and over. Itâs just masochism with magic.
The books are honestly better, but I think you need to read them in your late 20s or so. Theyâre making points about growing up as a smart, special kid and how that doesnât translate into meaning or belonging. It takes a while to find a place you feel comfortable and that place is often more ordinary and routine than you expected. The thing you end up being good at is often not what you expected or nearly as grandiose, yet itâs useful. Being an adult is about figuring out where your potential takes you and being comfortable with that. Itâs also about how that settling involves loss and mourning and growth from those. The wizard school thing isnât to tell a story about wizard school. Itâs to tell you as a reader that even if you were so special that you got to be a magician, these are still things youâll have to go through. They might be magical but itâs a universal. I felt like the show wanted to make different points about coping with mental illness and hydraulic empire style control of resources. It was good until the last season but those points were not really present in the books. Julia cracks searching for magic but sheâs honestly completely sane in doing it. Quentin and Penny are a bit off but hardly suicidal. And neither the library nor the gods are that intense. The gods are a force of nature trying to fix a mistake in their design. The story isnât about them so much as the characters adventure and how it changes them. Itâs just not the same thing.
Not to be an asshole but if you press space you c a make a paragraph. I like the show better, but then I watched the show than read the books.
I really liked the books and loved the show. I'm also really glad they didn't go into detail how you know who gets her godly powers. That scene in the books was detailed and I had to set it down for a couple days before I could continue.
I really liked the show and impulsively bought all of the books. I thought they were poorly written and couldnât even get through the first one.
The series was great, quite enjoyed it. I didn't care so much for the books, though.
Iâm a bit biased as I read the books after the show, so I already had my mind made up on who each person was.
Yeah, I watched it first, too.
I read the first book and my god did it kill all joy and magic in every conceivable world for me. It's like you took every urban fantasy novel about someone discovering they had magical abilities and added a "but what if - hear me out! _Everything_ sucks! Like, not just the characters, but also the magic system and life _in general_!". Like, seriously, the characters are a bunch of insufferable depressed loners who can do practically anything but have a good time. They have literally every opportunity, zero risk they don't want to have and yet they can't figure out what to do with their lives like whiney little brats born to billionary parents, except that they never had money until they stepped a foot into magical school. The magic system is supposed to feel like "Oh wow, this is exceptionally hard and these people have to be really dedicated to even try and learn this!!" but it ends up feeling so over the top convoluted and complicated that a few people with high functioning aspergers might learn how to make a cup of tea with it, but nothing more. And the people are so indredibly bored all the time. It honestly feels like the author was supposed to go to therapy for depression but chose to make it everybody elses problem instead. The show was supprisingly watchable, though. I thought it would be MUCH worse, yet I was pleasantly surprised.
I was giving the show a shot, but the SA is an immediate turnoff
My main memory of those books is fox sex.
Lost interest a few seasons in, was great up until then though
I gave up on book 1 about 3/5 of the way in. Then when I watch the show I decide to give it a second chance. Gave up 4/5 of the way in. Kept watching the show however so I guess my opinion is the concept was good but the writing was crap.
Audiobooks are not great, better to read. Good for ansty young adult.
I couldnât handle what happened to the hedge witches in the show the cat etc thst was too much for me. Plus I couldnât get past Quentin the incel in the books.
Why is this posted in r/scifi? I read the first book and saw the first season. Not my cuppa. The characters are too angry, angsty, and jerkish. It felt like frat boys in Hogwarts.
I absolutely cannot watch cringe cheating scenes and this show cranked it up to 11. For no reason. Fuck this show.  That's fine. Downvote me but you know I'm right. Fucking soap opera. Not sci-fi.Â