Review: Magicians - New Class

The Magicians: New Class is a comic book series set after the events of the novels. Despite Lev Grossman's name on the Amazon information page, the comic book series was written by Lilah Sturges, with excellent artist Plus Bak. The plot revolves around Brakebills College admitting 3 hedge magicians as 3rd years for the very first time in the college's history, and those 3 magicians are pulled into a private seminar course with 3 Brakebills college students.

There's a certain conceit about how college works which doesn't work for me --- the rivalry between the hedge magicians and the Brakebills regular doesn't ring true to me, but regardless, the writing is clearly targeted towards a monthly issue magazine --- each issue ends with a cliff-hanger, and we get plot twist after plot twist, as well as some references to characters/events from the novels.

Unfortunately, the comic book plot was written with the expectation of a continuing series, but apparently the series got cancelled after 5 books, so there are a lot of loose ends never tied up. The characters and the foreshadowing also don't work well, and there are no clues that you could possibly use to predict the plot twist. I can see why the series got cancelled after such a short time. The book is only recommended for die-hard fans of the Magicians, but even if you are one you might want to set your expectations low.