Chapter One Hundred Thirty-Six: The Magicians

I've heard so much about The Magicians by Lev Grossman for so long that I finally bit the bullet and checked it out from the library.  In fact, since I'd had it recommended to me by two people during the previous year and since the cover was so intriguing, I decided to check out the whole trilogy so I could just tear through them with no interruptions.  Alas, I couldn't bring myself to bother with the second or third books, although I did finish The Magicians (the first in the series).  The problem was partly that I hated most (maybe all) of the characters, who never seemed to change or learn anything or even to really be happy, and also the narrator (not one of the characters, as far as I could tell) seemed totally devoid of emotion or caring, which I found rather off-putting (and slightly psychopathic--I'm not sure whether that was intentional).  The plot was interesting and original enough, but I just couldn't enjoy or get into a story with so little emotional attachment.  The Magicians felt to me like an attempt to create an edgy, adult hybrid of The Chronicles of Narnia and Harry Potter, but I love those books because they are neither edgy nor adult--that's not what I want from this kind of story (or for most kinds of stories, for that matter, but that's just my preference), so The Magicians left me feeling cold.