The Magicians is a grown-up mashup of Harry Potter and the Chronicles of Narnia, with references to Tolkien, Oz, and other famous works of fantasy.

The protagonist, Quentin Coldwater, is never satisfied. Actually, one could stop there, but I'll keep going. He is smarter than most of his peers and bored with his high-school existence, until he is whisked away to a secret college of magic, where he is smarter than most of his peers and becomes bored with his existence. Quentin keeps shooting for the next great thing, and each time he reaches it, he realizes it wasn't what he hoped it would be.

I can imagine that Quentin's dissatisfaction would annoy many readers, but I actually sympathized a lot with him. Thankfully, I realized a long time ago that to be happy, one needs to focus on process rather than goals, that it is counterproductive to keep looking for the next best thing that's always just around the corner.

This was better than Grossman's previous novel, Codex, and I think he may end up being a novelist worth following.