Title: The Magician's Land (Magicians #3)

Author: Lev Grossman

Publisher: Penguin 2015

Genre: Fantasy

Pages: 416

Rating:  5/5 stars

Reading Challenges: Read My Own Damn Books; Finishing the Series; 52 Books - W25

Quentin Coldwater has been cast out of Fillory, the secret magical land of his childhood dreams. With nothing left to lose he returns to where his story began, the Brakebills Preparatory College of Magic. But he can’t hide from his past, and it’s not long before it comes looking for him.

Along with Plum, a brilliant young undergraduate with a dark secret of her own, Quentin sets out on a crooked path through a magical demimonde of gray magic and desperate characters. But all roads lead back to Fillory, and his new life takes him to old haunts, like Antarctica, and to buried secrets and old friends he thought were lost forever. He uncovers the key to a sorcery masterwork, a spell that could create magical utopia, a new Fillory—but casting it will set in motion a chain of events that will bring Earth and Fillory crashing together. To save them he will have to risk sacrificing everything.

Finally Finally Finally dove into this one. J read it awhile back and warned me that I should reread the first two before tackling the conclusion. I'm glad I did. There were lots of little things that I forgot about that come back int he third book. But overall, so brilliant! This volume has a much better pace than the first two books. Plus we get some great twists and turns that I totally didn't see coming. And we encounter all the old characters as well as a few new ones. I loved the switching between Quentin's story and Eliot and Janet. It was nice to return to Fillory and see how the storyline ultimately played out. I would have finished the book in 4 days, but the toddler kept stealing my iPad to play games and would subsequently run the battery down. So It took me more like a week and a half.