(The map is titled ‘Custom Map of Fillory’; I would give the source if I remembered or could find it online, and will if I ever do. The seal of Brakebills is from an illustration in the trilogy.)
This is primarily for fans of the TV show on SyFy who have seen the entire series and may not have read the books or who’ve read them but not really liked them after one reading. Until recently, I fell into the latter category, but after the second reread I just finished, I rank them among the best fantasy ever written.
I became an avid fan of Syfy’s TV show The Magicians after being introduced to it by one of my counselors at the VA. I fell in love immediately. I have watched and rewatched the entire series a number of times, the first rewatch coming just after the climax of the finale of season 4; first, I went online to see if that “really” happened, then I finished that fatal episode. Afterwards, when I finished crying, I first went back to “The Side Effect” and watched it back to back with “No Better to be Safe Than Sorry”, cried some more, then rewatched the entire season 4 for all the foreshadowing (there was plenty, though it was subtle). THEN I rewatched the entire series up to that point to ensure my perception that it was consistent was correct; it was.
After rewatching again in 2020, I decided it was time to take on the novels from which the series was adapted. As I noted above, I thought they were good, but not necessarily great. A lot of that was due to the fact that I kept reading looking for points that weren’t there. I then rewatched the TV series AGAIN, in as much of a binge as I could while working a full time job and without cocaine.
During the writers’ strike, which I wholeheartedly supported (along with the actors’ strike which began later), I started another rewatch upon realizing it would be a while before anything new appeared. This time, I limited it to one episode per week, the same day of the week (Sunday morning with breakfast, if you’d like to know). I finished that up about a month ago, and decided the novels deserved another read. And, boy, am I glad I did, and for fans of the TV show, I highly recommend them all.
Lev Grossman’s Magicians trilogy
I’m not even sure what if the trilogy has an official designation as such; if I were, I would use it here. At this point, I’m just going to list them; what bare descriptions there will be come later. The first novel of the trilogy is The Magicians: A Novel, published in 2009. Its sequel, published in 2011, is The Magician King. The final novel is The Magician’s Land, published in 2014, the year before the TV series began. Viking Press in the USA published all three novels.
Showrunners (and creators) Sera Gamble and John McNamara are both huge fans of the novels. Sera read and reread them throughout the show’s run while John ceased reading them as soon as the show began; both followed the approach that was best for them.
Archaia, division of Boom Entertainment Inc., published two related comics series, both later collected into trade paper back editions. The first is The Magicians: Alice’s Story and the second is The Magicians: New Class. With consulation from Lev Grossman, these were written by Lilah Sturges and illustrated by Pius Bak.
SyFy’s TV series The Magicians, created and run by Sera Gamble and John McNamara, is comprised of five seasons of thirteen episodes each, premiering on 16 December 2015 and concluding on 1 April 2020 in the early days of the pandemic.
What I’m going to do here is describe enough of the differences so that anyone who reads this will have just enough of their preconceptions based on the TV show shattered so those won’t get in the way. And the best place to start with that is in Fillory, or at least with the heptalogy we all wish we could actually read, fans of the TV show and of the novels alike.
Fillory in Grossman’s trilogy
In the trilogy, the world of Fillory is not a world in our universe, but a sole world in its own pocket universe. It is flat and two-sided. Its sun and two moons revolve around it, as do that stars in the sky, which are not gaseous giants but more like large nightlights. The nearest analogy I can think of is the cosmology of the ancient Semitic peoples such as that upon which the Tanakh (Hebrew scriptures; the Old Testament to Christians) is based.
The continent which the kingdom of Fillory occupies the largest and central part of has two mountain rages which dividing it from its neighbors, the Northern Barrier in the north, separating it from Loria, and the Copper Mountains in the south, separating it from the Wandering Desert. There is a huge Eastern Sea with several large islands and a Western Sea, at the other side of which is the western continent, which never appears in Grossman’s trilogy or the in-universe heptalogy.
The population of the kingdom of Fillory is very small and fairly stable at ten thousand humans and ten thousand magical creatures, many of them human-animal hybrids, plus all the talking animals and talking trees. The magical creatures include griffins, hippogriffs, giants, dwarfs, pegasi, (hippo)centaurs, elves, minotaurs, fairies, satyrs, nymphs, dryads, fauns, manticores, sphinxes, spirits, elementals, grimlings, pangborns, cynocephali (dog-headed humanoids), reptilians, shas, vulpa (fox) centaurs, merefolk, assorted human-animal hybrids, and jinnis. There are myriad talking animals, of which Humbledrum the bear is the recognized leader at the time of the trilogy.
Loria has no magical creatures, just humans. The Wandering Desert has the “Southern Nomads” and giant talking bunnies, possibly others.
The Fillory and Further series
(that all fans of both the novels and the TV series wish they could read)
A notable difference between the TV show and the novel series is that in the novels, there are five Chatwin children (versus three on TV), in descending order of age: Martin, Fiona, Rupert, Helen, and Jane. Also, their adventures in Fillory begin during the Great War, also known as the First World War, not during the Second World War as portrayed in the TV show.
Having laid that out, let’s now take a look at the contents of Christopher Plover’s children’s series Fillory and Further, as described in Lev Grossman’s trilogy, The Magicians, The Magician King, and The Magician’s Land. The TV show adds other detail, but its version isn’t really in the same continuity.
Fillory and Further, Book One: The World in the Walls (by Christopher Plover, January 1935)
Features Martin and Fiona, who get to Fillory through the grandfather clock at their Aunt Maude’s house in the year 1917. Aunt Maude’s house is called Dockery House, on Darrowby Lane in Fowey, Cornwall. The Chatwins are there because their father is at war iun Belgium and their mother is in an asylum. Martin opens the grandfather clock and discovers Fillory in the walls of the house. Martin becomes a master horseman and Helen a forest scout. Together Martin and Fiona look for the trees enchanted by the Watcher Woman. Martin and Jane prevent the Watcherwoman from permanently stopping time at 5 o’clock on a rainy afternoon.
Fillory and Further, Book Two: The Girl Who Told Time (by Christopher Plover, Fall 1936)
Features Rupert and Helen shanghaied from their respective boarding schools in the winter (with all five Chatwin children eventually in Fillory together). Their adventure crosses over with the previous adventure, with Rupert dogging Martin and Fiona in disguise as the Wood One while Helen chases the Questing Beast.
Fillory and Further, Book Three: The Flying Forest (by Christopher Plover, October 1937)
Features Rupert and Fiona getting to Fillory by climbing a tree. They spend most of the novel looking for the ticking which is driving their leopard friend Sir Hotspots crazy. The ticking turns out to be a large clock made by dwarfs in a cave, which a giant seals shut. Afterwards Rupert and Fiona go to Castle Whitespire, which is in essence a giant clockwork. Rupert trains as a deadeye archer. Martin appears toward the end, only to disappear into the Darkling Woods, never to be seen again.
Fillory and Further, Book Four: The Secret Sea (by Christopher Plover, 1938)
Features Rupert and Jane, who get to Fillory by riding a magic bicycle then stow away aboard the Swift to escape the pursuing Watcher Woman; the ship is crewed by a party of wrongly accused noblemen masquerading as pirates. Fiona, trains as a master fencer. Rupert turns twelve and is never invited back.
Fillory and Further, Book Five: The Wandering Dune (by Christopher Plover, published posthumously in late 1939)
Features Helen and Jane, who are transported to Fillory while painting in a meadow. The sisters are taken aboard the Windswept, a clipper crewed by bunnies cruising the sands of the Wandering Desert. Captain High-bound gives Helen and Jane five buttons with which they can magically travel to Fillory at any time. Helen hides them all (in a dried-up well at their aunt’s house, it later turns out) upon their return to Earth, self-righteously stating that entry into Fillory should be up to Ember and Umber.
Fillory and Further, Book Six: The Magicians (by Jane Chatwin; synopsis in the chapter “The Retreat” of Lev Grossman’s The Magicians)
Features only Jane, after she turns 13 (which would make it the year 1925), who crosses over into Fillory after a hedgehog named Pricklepump helps her find the five magic buttons. She finds Fillory beset by ferocious winds. In the Darkling Woods she finds the wounded Ember, who tells her about Martin’s transformation into the Beast. Together on the Cozy Horse, they visit the dwarves, who create for her the magical pocket watch with which to control time and create loops. Jane never returns home to Cornwall ever again.
The Door in the Page: My Life in Two Worlds (by Rupert Chatwin; found in its entirety in chapters 16-18 of Lev Grossman’s The Magician’s Land)
A more factual telling of the Chatwins’ adventures and interactions with Plover; found in its entirety in Chapters 16-18 of Lev Grossman’s The Magician’s Land. It includes an account of the children discovering the clock portal to Fillory (Fiona was seven at the time; Jane was five). Martin and Fi went in and came back out somewhat older (their adventures were told in The World in the Walls). Then Rupert and Helen went in (The Girl Who Told Time). After they came out, just five minutes had lapsed in real time between then and when Martin and Fi first went through. By then Jane was awake and they all five went through.
Rupert writes that Fiona was the first to mention Fillory to American retiree Christopher Plover, who lived next door in Darras House. Contrary to what Plover wrote in the novels, the Chatwin children went through multiple times, usually all together, all through the year, not just summer. Rupert’s account also includes the truth of Martin’s last return to Fillory and how he managed to stay, and that Plover didn’t begin writing his fictitious accounts of the Chatwins’ adventures until Martin disappeared.
Some major general differences
(mostly but not
entirely in characters)
All the main characters are white. The only nonwhite character in the novels is Hamish Bax, who is black, like the TV version, along with also likewise being head of Botany.
Several characters created for the TV series are not in any of the novels, and some who are by name are actually completely different.
There’s no Kady, no Todd, no Zelda, no Marina, no Pete, no Harriet, no Charlton, no god Bacchus, no maened Shoshanna, no goddess Iris, no god Aengus, no goddess Heka, no Binder, no Monster, no Sister, no Idri, no Ess, no goddess Persephone (though there is an Our Lady Underground), no god Hades, no demigod John Gaines, no Lipson, no Victoria, no Third Year class that went to Fillory, no Santa Claus, no Fairy Queen, no McAllistairs, no Fray, no Everett, no Sheila, no Phyllis, no Cyrus, no Hyman, no Tick, no messenger bunnies, no Prudence Plover (Christopher’s sister), no Calypso, no Prometheus.
Characters called Dint and Fen do appear in the first novel, The Magicians, but they are of a radically different nature. Everyone should know who TV Fen is, though you may not remember Dint was her father, and his father before him. Novel Dint and Fen are both accomplished warriors.
There is a character called Lovelady, but that’s his name, not a titled passed along like Dead Pirate Roberts. He was a traveling muggle who collected supposed magical artifacts and resold them.
Ember and Umber are gods, but in the form of actual rams, not human-ram hybrids.
Novels Poppy, no last name (Poppy Kline on TV), is Australian, and never went to Brakebills; she studied magic in Tasmania at Esquith College. But she is an obsessed dragonologist.
Novels Richard, no last name, bears little resemblance to Richard Corrigan on TV. He’s a Brakebills alum two years ahead of Eliot, Janet, and Josh, also a Physical Kid, unlike Corrigan, who graduated years before and when we meet him is a mental health counselor. You never ‘see’ him until after Q & A have graduated.
Interestingly, there is a Wizard Court, but it is only mentioned once. It exists, but it never plays a part in the stories.
Jane Chatwin not only survives Martin, she is still alive at the end of the third novel (yes, a bit of a spoiler, but not much, really).
TV’s Kady Orloff-Diaz is represented somewhat by Brakebills student Amanda Orloff and by the member of Free Trader Beowulf Asmodeus (whose real name may actually be Betsy), though they are not the same.
Alice is a brunette.
Josh is a Physical Kid, not a botanist.
Penny (no last name) is a punk with a Mohawk.
There is an Iris, but she’s not a goddess.
Benedict is the official map-maker of Fillory the kingdom, but it is Quentin whom he comes to hero-worship; he never even meets Penny.
TV’s Plum Merritt is Plum Purchas in the books, who is Rupert’s great-granddaughter rather than Jane’s granddaughter.
Novel Bigby is also a pixie, but is male rather than female.
Magic is never turned off, though it comes close.
Quentin’s parents are still married.
There is no opium in the air of Fillory in the novels.
Martin killed Plover in 1939 in Darras House.
Although Jane Chatwin used her clock to rewind time countless times, she didn’t always involve the same specific people, much less the same from Brakebills thirty-nine times. It was actually so many times not even she knew how many.
Notes from The Magicians
The main character of the entire novel trilogy is Quentin Coldwater, and in the first novel he is also the only POV character.
Brakebills College of Magical Pedagogy is 100 miles north of Manhattan and two-and-a-half months behind the outside world in time. So, when James (rather than Julia) accompanies Quentin for his Princeton interview, it’s November, but when Q gets to Brakebills, it’s August.
Brakebills University on TV is all grad school, and I don’t recall a length of study being specified. Brakebills College is described in the novels as the equivalent of a four-year undergrad program with one year of post grad, but it’s really like doing the senior year then a four year undergrad. Each class year has a minimum of twenty students.
Some two hundred prospects take the entrance exam, which only Quentin and Penny pass. You find out later Julia also took it at the same time but failed, and that she was too strong for the mindwipe to completely erase her memories of the events.
Students are required to be in their school uniforms whenever they are not in their dorm rooms. Much of Brakebills College is patterned after English boarding schools (it says so explicitly in The Magicians), with formal dinners every night and a strict curfew.
The Dean Fogg of the novels is more authoritarian and without much of a sense of humor. He would have expelled all of the TV Physical Kids.
All students sleep in the House, the name for the main building at Brakebills where classes also take place. The Physical Kids Cottage was a hangout place used for seminars, not living quarters (same true for all other disciplines). Only the Physical Kids, Bigby, and Fogg could find it.
The different major magic fields (not the same as disciplines) are Physical, Natural, Illusion, Knowledge, Healing, and Psychic. Students are tested and sorted at the beginning of their Third Year.
Physical magic is the rarest; for most of Q’s time at Brakebills, there are only five Physical Kids, him (Quentin Coldwater), Alice Quinn, Eliot Waugh, Janet Way/Pluchinsky (called Janet Way by a student in The Magicians and Janet Pluchinsky in The Magician King), and Josh Hoberman. Q & A were, of course, Third Years, the rest were Fourth Years. There had also been five Physical Kids the previous year, but Richard (no last name) and Isabel (also no last name) graduated. Four rising Third Years tested into the Physical Kids at the head of Quentin’s and Alice’s Fifth Year (names never given).
The Beast doesn’t invade Brakebills until Q’s Third Year. He traumatizes Professor March and eats Amanda Orloff.
Fogg initiates a revival of welters at Brakebills, then begins to build an international system of games and playoffs.
Brakebills South normally takes place for nearly all the fall semester of the Fourth Year.
After graduating, Quentin and Alice move into an apartment in Tribeca in Manhattan’s Lower East Side. Janet and Eliot are in Soho, and Richard has a room in their apartment. Josh stays with Anaïs, Luxembourgeoise star of the Pan-European welters team. A lot of their time is spent aimlessly partying and fucking, though Q & A only do each other (though Q and Janet do have sex after putting a very drunk Eliot to bed one night).
It’s Penny who discovers Fillory is real, showing up the same morning Alice catches the three asleep in bed in the morning to invite them to go with him. After having discovered the Neitherlands himself, he buys a button from Lovelady that turns out to be one of the five Chatwin buttons. Unlike the TV show, he can’t travel to Fillory as a traveler without going thru the Neitherlands and without the button.
The party that goes to Fillory is Penny, Quentin, Alice, Eliot, Janet, Josh, Anaïs, and Richard.
The battle with The Beast takes place in a large and extensive cavern called Ember’s Tomb (not an actual tomb), where the Beast eats Penny’s hands and a good part of Q’s shoulder, before he is killed by niffin Alice.
Quentin’s coma last six months, not three weeks, followed by six months of physical therapy. During his therapy time, Jane Chatwin visits to give him back her Fillory and Further: Book Six, and, among other things, informs him offhandedly about Plover’s molesting her brother (there is no ghost loop like in the TV show).
The hunt for the Questing Beast lasts a year, and, like the TV show, he ends up wishing to go back home.
Also like the show, he quits magic and Fogg sets him up to work at the advertising firm, where after five months, he meets Emily Greenstreet, whose story is pretty much the same as on the TV show. A month after that, Eliot, Janet, and Julia appear outside his 12th floor window and invite him to be the fourth member of their royal court in Fillory.
Notes on The Magician King
Quentin is one of two POV characters here, the other is Julia Wicker. The Quentin POV is told in the “present”; that of Julia’s POV is the story of what happened after she failed the Brakebills entrance exam. The novel moves back-and-forth between storylines, thankfully in whole chapters.
The novels opens after the four Earth magicians have been kings and queens of Fillory for two years. We learn how the survivors of the Battle of Ember’s Tomb retreated to Earth, how Eliot and Janet met Julia, and get a vague notion of what Josh did. Penny entered one of the building in the Neitherlands and never came out.
Quentin mounts an expedition to the Outer Island to collect back taxes, upon which he departs in the Muntjac, with Julia, Bindle (bodyguard), Benedict, and Abigail the Sloth (representing the talking animals), in addition to the crew of the ship. After landing, he is given The Story of the Seven Keys, which is radically different from the version in the TV series, and he is given the quest to find all the keys (they are all in Fillory). Not even those who give him the quest know what they unlock.
When they find the first key, Quentin and Julia both grab it and find themselves transported to Chesterton, Massachusetts, where his parents live after moving from Brooklyn. It takes them three days to get back to Fillory, and when they first get to the Neitherlands, it looks like it’s been through a war, which, in fact, it has, and still is. The old gods have come to destroy it, with the only force standing up to them is the Order of the Library, with none other than Penny leading the fighting. Just before Quentin and Julia enter the Fillory fountain, help arrives for the forces of the Library.
When they return, a year has passed. Eliot has taken over the quest for the keys and has found six, with the only one missing being the first key that Quentin and Julia found. The two go the the underworld to get it, and the underworld here is unique to Fillory, with only the shades of those who’ve died in Fillory there.
The Julia POV describes her journey after encountering Quentin when he is at his parents’ on vacation, her discovery of the world of hedge magic, her quest across the USA to different hedge safehouses, and becoming part of an online group of hedges called Free Trader Beowulf.
Remember Julia saying the following to Kady in ‘Ramifications’ (season 2, episode 12): “Lightning storm, huge. Happened every time Persephone ascended from the Underworld. She used to come every spring. Now, decades, no pattern, no trace. Except these modern accounts show four storms stretch across the entire swath of Southern Europe, and, smack in the center, Murs, France.”
The apex of the hedge world turns out to be a chateau in Murs, France, where the top hedge witches in the entire world gather. There are ten counting Julia, six who are from FTB, also counting Julia, one of whom uses the name Asmodeus. Seeking more power, they decide to summon a deity, and they one they choose to call a local deity whom they name Our Lady Underground, after the Notre Dame de Sous Terre at Chartes in France.
Unlike the group in the TV show, there is nothing altruistic about it; they are all feeding their ambition. Only seven of those at Murs are involved; the six from FTB and another named Iris. The result is the same as that in the TV show, with Reynard the Fox coming instead, killing everyone but Julia and Asmodeus, with the latter escaping while Reynard is raping Julia.
It is the actions of the group at Murs which gets the attention of the old gods and makes them aware of the loophole that has allowed magic into the universe for mortals to be able to use, which is what spurs them to try to close it (rather than doing so as collective punishment for the killing of a god by a mortal).
After having retrieved the seventh key, Quentin and the questing party go to the door at the edge of the world, where he inserts and turns them all, restoring magic back to its full strength (while never turned off, it had been getting weak) permanently.
At the end of the novel, Quentin is expelled from Fillory back to Earth (why? You’ll have to read the book) and Julia is made a dryad by Our Lady Underground (who is not Persephone) and crosses over to the Far Side of Fillory, with Josh and Poppy taking over their places as the junior king and junior queen of Fillory.
Notes on The Magicians: Alice’s Story
The graphic novel by Sturges and Bak is a retelling of events in Grossman’s The Magicians from Alice’s point-of-view. It mostly stays faithful to the original story, with the exception of leaving Richard and Anaïs out of the Fillory party and contradicting the source regarding Fen’s actions in the Battle of Ember’s Tomb.
Notes on The Magician’s Land
First, kudos to Lev Grossman for mentioning Norton Juster’s 1961 fantasy novel The Phantom Tollbooth, the first fantasy I ever read. The POV here alternates between Eliot, Quentin, Plum, and, in one section, Janet.
Fillory is dying. Ember says so. Eliot begins a quest to try and save it, one he gives himself and onto which the other royal sign.
On Earth, former Brakebills professor Quentin and former Brakebills student Plum Purchas (later revealed to be Rupert Chatwin’s great-granddaughter) have been recruited into what turns out to be a heist, specifically of something held by the Couple, with the crew radically different in composition from the version on the TV show.
Quentin, now thirty, finds out his discipline upon being hired by Brakebills, and, like the TV show, it’s Minor Mendings. His one real friend on staff is Hamish Bax, head of the botany department.
Plum is expelled halfway through Fifth Year, and Quentin is fired from trying to cover up the incident which led to her expulsion. Thus their like need for income from the heist.
On a journey of the two to survey the state of the kingdom, Janet recounts to Eliot her walkabout in the Wandering Desert and encounter with the band the TV show called the Southern Nomads. There are similarities to the TV account but also very significant differences. Also, the phrase “hard glossy armour” gets a whole new meaning.
After the heist, Quentin and Plum hide out in a safe house (not the hedge kind) in Brooklyn, and it is there Quentin encounters niffin Alice. He eventually reincorporates her, and like the show, uses bacon to get her to eat again, and also fresh mangoes and very good chocolate, along with champagne.
In the meantime, Eliot has returned to Earth seeking Quentin’s help in attempting to save Fillory. Of course, they do, but that is all I’m going to say because anything else really would be spoiling.
Anyway, the novel trilogy is fantastic and I am as much a fan of it as I am of the TV show. I can’t wait to reread it again.
