The Magicians TV show is now available to stream on Amazon Prime. Boen blew through a couple of seasons and I started re-reading the book to remind myself of how different the book was.
The TV show is actually very different from the book, and in many ways the TV show is better. The stories from the first couple of books are twisted together, and the evil Martin Chatwin character shows up far earlier. Quentin also never goes through the sequence where he lives through the real world post graduation and decides despite all the magical power available to him to live it up through drugs and alcohol. In many ways, the TV show has the best of the books --- the casting of Eliot and Janet/Margo characters are near neigh perfect, and the TV show has many episodes (like the one with Queen's "Under Pressure") that are excellent with no counterpart in the book.
The novel itself is badly written. Lev Grossman doesn't quite develop his characters, and the plot is what makes the book work. There are plenty of reveals after the fact that fit together nicely that the TV show can't quite do justice to, but the writing is uneven.
Having said that, without the books there would be no TV show, and the book itself while not well written has a great plot and sets up a situation that's enjoyable to experience, as evidenced by the TV show going on way past the books' finish without ending up boring to watch.
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