If You Had Magic Powers, You Know You'd Do It Too

Today, my merry little blogflowers, we are going to discuss that most irritating literary occurrence: the crappy ending. You know the feeling, when you’ve spent two hours watching a movie, and then you find out it was allllll a dream. Or a split personality. Or an identical twin. In other words, some lame concept, because by that point the screenwriter was either an idiot, lazy, or dying from malnourishment, and couldn’t come up with anything better.

In a book, it’s even worse, because you haven’t just spent an hour or two, but sometimes days or weeks, depending on the speed in which you consume the written word. I’m not talking about the sort of rubbish that you can tell from page one how painful it will be to mentally consume. No, no. At least those books are honest about what they are. This particular brand of Steinho ire is reserved for the book that pulls you in, offers up a slew of diverse and developed characters, then at the peak of excitement, the main character will suddenly get knocked unconscious, or fall down a well, or turn out to be crazy, and every bit of excitement was alllllll in his head. I will never forgive you, “Shutter Island.” Never.

A horrible ending is always worse when the other 95% of the book is pure gold. One example is Lev Grossman’s “The Magicians.” That’s Lev Grossman, not to be confused with the obnoxious Tom Cruise character, Les Grossman, from the movie “Tropic Thunder.”

“The Magicians” started out so promising. To describe it as simply as possible, it‘s, “Harry Potter and The Drunken College Years.” And if it wasn’t enough to draw upon one lovable kids fantasy series, it also pays homage to C. S. Lewis’s “The Chronicles of Narnia.” What really happens when after years of sneaking off to a magical land of talking animals, called Fillory in this book, one simply grows up to be boring and old? How would that twist one’s mind? Team Narnia, mature as they are, willingly accept their fate. In “The Magicians,” one of the wee tots, (instead of the Pevensies, we have the Chatwins) grows so miserable at being ejected from his fancy through-the-portal lifestyle, that he goes insane, turns evil, and magically eats a few people along the way.

So the novel had a great villain, lots of dark magic and danger. It also had it’s share of salacious college party life. For example, while turned into a goose, our broody and charming main character, Quentin, is instinctively inspired to get busy with one of his similarly transformed classmates. It sort of put me in mind to T.H White’s “The Once and Future King.” If you don’t get the reference, think back to Disney’s version of “The Sword in the Stone,” where to teach young Arthur about life, Merlin turns him into a fish, a squirrel and a bird. Teach him about life indeed!

Sprawling, vine-covered university of weirdo professors. Check. Danger at the hands of an enraged, supernatural, wannabe Edmund Pevensie. Check. Some hot goose-on-goose action. Double check. What could be bad about this book?

Well, nothing, until the ending. Pardon the spoiler alert, but when the young Quentin and his team of wizard over-achievers finally make it to Fillory, nothing happens. They walk around. They learn how the land of Fillory has been on the decline ever since those darling Chatwins left. Then, after a few minor skirmishes, they end up in a cave. Blah blah blah, the villain flat out explains his evil schemes, blah blah blah, some of Quentin’s friends get dismembered, bladdy blah blah, Quentin gets knocked out, and wakes up in a centaur hospital, without knowing exactly what happened, what became of his friends, or what to do next. Eventually he returns home, and gets an office job at a magical corporation. An office job.

Perhaps Grossman was trying to make a statement on how when we are young, we dream of whimsical adventures, flying on dragons, sailing with pirates. When you grow up, you realize that like everything else, even magic would be mundane, tedious, and probably involve a lot of bureaucracy. You’d probably have to get a license for your dragon, and think of the amount of money you’d spend to feed it.

Or maybe, Grossman was just tired. Fortunately, he got his act together for the last two paragraphs, where he literally had the remains of Quentin’s posse smash in, Batman style, through the window of his office building, and insult our hero into giving up his day job, and getting back into the magic game. Hopefully for the sequel, Grossman will listen to his own advice.

Less paperwork. More goose sex.