Books like The Magicians
What should you read after Lev Grossman’s novel? It depends on what you loved most about it.
- Lev Grossman
- 2009
- Contemporary fantasy
What did you love about it?
Choosing one reorders everything below.
Best books to read after The Magicians
Ranked overall. Pick what you loved above to re-rank them.
Best overall matchThe Night Circus
Erin Morgenstern
Magic as discipline and cost rather than wonder, two students bound to a competition neither chose, and an atmosphere thick enough to lie down in.
- Magic that is mostly homework
- Damage with real consequences
- A secretive magic college
- No irony, no snark
Great matchHarry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone
J.K. Rowling
The book Grossman argues with on every page. Worth rereading afterwards, if only to see how much of the shape he kept while removing all the comfort.
- A secretive magic college
- Magic that is mostly homework
- Fantasy answered by adulthood
- Written for children
Best for magic as studyThe Name of the Wind
Patrick Rothfuss
Rothfuss takes magic seriously as a course of study — tuition, lab work, sleepless nights — and hands you a gifted, insufferable narrator to spend it with.
- Magic that is mostly homework
- A secretive magic college
- A hero who is never satisfied
- The series is unfinished
Great matchAmerican Gods
Neil Gaiman
A man drifting through a magical America he cannot quite feel anything about. Gaiman shares Grossman's flat affect and his suspicion that the numinous disappoints.
- A hero who is never satisfied
- A wry, referential voice
- Fantasy answered by adulthood
- Road novel, episodic
Great matchJonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell
Susanna Clarke
Magic restored to England by two men who mostly quarrel about procedure, footnotes included. The scholarly, disenchanted approach Grossman clearly enjoys.
- Magic that is mostly homework
- A wry, referential voice
- A secretive magic college
- A thousand pages, Austen-paced
Great matchThe Lies of Locke Lamora
Scott Lynch
Clever, damaged young people trained in a hard discipline, running on banter right up until the consequences arrive and stop being funny.
- Damage with real consequences
- A wry, referential voice
- Graduates with nothing to do
- A heist novel, no school
Great matchUprooted
Naomi Novik
An apprenticeship with a cold master, magic that must be practised badly before it is practised well, and a wood that punishes carelessness.
- Magic that is mostly homework
- Damage with real consequences
- A secretive magic college
- Earnest rather than ironic
Great matchNeverwhere
Neil Gaiman
An ordinary man falls through into a hidden London and discovers the magical world is filthy, dangerous and entirely indifferent to him.
- A Narnia that turns out real
- A wry, referential voice
- A hero who is never satisfied
- No school, no study
Worth a look — with a warningCity of Bones
Cassandra Clare
Here because it fills the same shelf — a teenager discovering a hidden magical society — but it plays every beat straight that Grossman goes out of his way to undercut.
- A Narnia that turns out real
- A secretive magic college
- Fantasy answered by adulthood
- Written for teenagers
Great matchThe Dresden Files: Storm Front
Jim Butcher
Magic as a job with paperwork, rent arrears and consequences, narrated by someone who is very funny about how badly it is all going.
- A wry, referential voice
- Magic that is mostly homework
- Damage with real consequences
- A case-of-the-week structure
Great matchThe Kingkiller Chronicle: The Wise Man's Fear
Patrick Rothfuss
More university, more study, and a long stretch of a gifted young man learning that talent and satisfaction have nothing whatever to do with each other.
- A secretive magic college
- Magic that is mostly homework
- A hero who is never satisfied
- Assumes book one
Great matchThe Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the witch and the wardrobe
C.S. Lewis
Read it as the source text Grossman is grieving. Fillory is Narnia with the door left open and nobody waiting on the other side.
- A Narnia that turns out real
- Fantasy answered by adulthood
- Magic that is mostly homework
- Plainly a children's book
Great matchA Darker Shade of Magic
V.E. Schwab
Parallel Londons, a magician who can walk between them, and a magic system with rules strict enough to hurt. Cleaner and more fun than Grossman, deliberately so.
- A Narnia that turns out real
- Magic that is mostly homework
- Damage with real consequences
- Adventure tone throughout
What should you read after The Magicians?
The Magicians by Lev Grossman works on several levels at once, and which book you should read next depends on which of those levels got you. For most readers the closest match is The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern — magic as discipline and cost rather than wonder, two students bound to a competition neither chose, and an atmosphere thick enough to lie down in.
If what stayed with you was a secretive magic college, read Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone by J.K. Rowling instead: the book Grossman argues with on every page. Worth rereading afterwards, if only to see how much of the shape he kept while removing all the comfort. The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss is the other strong option — rothfuss takes magic seriously as a course of study — tuition, lab work, sleepless nights — and hands you a gifted, insufferable narrator to spend it with.
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