The sequel to the previous GWC BC selection (we should have stickers) The Magicians is in bookstores today.
Here’s a fanvid by Parry Gripp from Nerfherder. (I’m not sure if there are spoilers in the slides. Very light ones at most.)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G66wDnHq-Zg
Don’t make me ask Lev for more baby pictures.
Bumping, having read it now. Excellent book, and a worthy sequel.
Following up on our March/April 2011 Book Club Selection, The Magicians, the Book Club selection for November and December is Lev Grossman’s sequel The Magician King!
“I wear man-tights,” Quentin said, pretending to be affronted.
SPOILERS AHEAD
anyone know if i’m I likely to really miss out if i didn’t read the The Magicians or can The Magician King be read independently?
I haven’t picked up Magician King yet, but given the way The Magicians went I’d suggest you read it first. And when you do, let us know what you think of it - we’ve got some diverging opinions around here about some things in that novel. 
Hrm. It’s preferable to have read the first one, of course, but you should be fine reading this one by itself. They’re different stories, but (largely) the same people are in them both. You’d be missing some details of the backstory, but nothing important plotwise that I can recall. It might be interesting to read them this way.
TL;DR The first one was Hogwarts. This one is Narnia. Same characters, mostly.
I really liked this one. For those who hated Quentin in The Magicians, I think he becomes much more likeable by the end of The Magician King. I liked how Julia’s back-story was interwoven with the race to save magic. Sometimes I wondered where the story was going earlier on (with Quentin’s whole quest narrative obsession), but looking back it seems to all fit together nicely. And the openness of the close just makes this reader’s heart happy - the whole Neitherlands there, open, opportunity. It’s not dissimilar to how The Magicians ended with the group showing up to bring Quentin out of his corporate tool life, but this one just felt better.
Does anyone know if there are plans for a third novel? I think it’s fine as is, but given the open ending I wonder…
NPR seems to think that it is a trilogy. http://www.npr.org/2011/08/09/139072315/magician-king-a-hauntingly-fantastic-follow-up
I very much liked this. I agree with everything you said about Quentin - he really grows up in this book, and faces consequences for his (and other people’s) actions. I very much liked the flushing out of Julia - she had been a minor and tragic note in the previous book, but becomes a developed, complex character in this one.
I think the only character I was not satisfied with was Eliot. Maybe he just didn’t play enough of a part to be truly painted in detail, but I feel like he was very much marginalized in this one. I do like the finely-wrought tension between him and Quentin though, the feelings that he has for Quentin are glaringly obvious without ever being explicitly spoken of.
All in all, these are excellent books, ones that keep me thinking about them when they are done. I hope that there is a third.
There will be. Working title is The Magician’s Land
Cool 
I’ve been on a kick of giving this and The Magicians to loved ones as birthday gifts (the same people to whom I gifted Old Man’s War :)), it’s good to know there’ll be another one down the line, too.
This is awesome. My real-life best friend Ramsey Ess does a podcast with his friend Adam Maid called “Wonderful, Thanks.” It’s a hilarious podcast, and the audio quality is surprisingly good, considering I know for a fact that they record it on a MacBook in the bedroom of Ramsey’s apartment in Brooklyn. Each week they discuss a word with a guest.
In their most recent episode, their guest is none other than Lev Grossman, and the word is “fantasy”!
Word: Fantasy
Guest: Lev Grossman
Bio: Lev Grossman is the New York Times bestselling author of The Magicians, its sequel The Magician King, and several other wonderful books. Additionally, he has worked as a journalist for The Village Voice, Entertainment Weekly, Time Out New York, Salon, The New York Times, and Time Magazine. He also writes for the Internet on his blogand his Twitter. In the past, he has sat in very close proximity to Lou Ferrigno.
Discussed: The Shire, The Shi’ar, signing body parts, and the first edition Monster Manual’s Rakshasa.
I haven’t had a chance to listen to it yet, but I’m sure it’s hilarious. And it features a close personal friend of a GWCer!
