From Publisher’s Weekly:
Harry Potter discovers Narnia is real in this derivative fantasy thriller from Time book critic Grossman (Codex). Quentin Coldwater, a Brooklyn high school student devoted to a children’s series set in the Narnia-like world of Fillory, is leading an aimless existence until he’s tapped to enter a mysterious portal that leads to Brakebills College, an exclusive academy where he’s taught magic. Coldwater, whose special gifts enable him to skip grades, finds his family’s world mundane and domestic when he returns home for vacation. He loses his innocence after a prank unintentionally allows a powerful evil force known only as the Beast to enter the college and wreak havoc. Eventually, Coldwater’s powers are put to the test when he learns that Fillory is a real place and how he can journey there. Genre fans will easily pick up the many nods to J.K. Rowling and C.S. Lewis, not to mention J.R.R. Tolkien in the climactic battle between the bad guy and a magician.
My Review:
I loved this book. This is the Harry Potter I have been waiting for. It is not quite so quaint and wholesome, there’s sex and drugs involved and the characters seem much more multi-layered to me and more convincing. I will admit that the last third of the book went a little too much into the fantastical for my taste, but the realness of the characters and their conflicts helped to keep the story grounded. I don’t want to give away too much of the plot, so I am just going to advise you all to READ THIS BOOK!!
State of Denmark 
hey! Happy New Year! I just don’t yet know about this book. If you still remember it in a couple of years and I haven’t yet read it will you challenge me to do so?! Hope you are having a good vacay – do you begin again this Monday? Happy 2010
I’m so glad you liked this one. It’s gotten quite a few mixed reviews in the blogosphere, but that hasn’t dampened my desire to give it a try.
I’ve put off my review of this one for like a month now because I really don’t think I liked it. And I can see how a lot of people will mistakenly pick it up looking for something that’s not in this book. Still, I appreciate what he was trying to do with this book. It’s supposedly going to become a trilogy and I’m wondering where it could go from where it ended.
Hello, I am just checking to make sure that you have received your Secret Santa package. Happy New Year.
This one is getting such mixed reviews! I’m not big into fantasy–okay I almost never read it–so I’m hesitant to pick it up.
I want to read this! I tried to get it at the store the other day but it was out!