I also watched the first season of the show prior to reading the book and the best thing I have to say about the book is that it gave me a deeper appreciation for the things they changed when they made the show. :P
I said in the Goodreads thread and I still firmly believe that the entire first half of the book could be condensed down to a few lines of backstory here and there and the book itself could start at "Book II / Manhattan." There isn't any significant plot development in the first half of the book that wouldn't be done just as well and possibly better as an eluded-to backstory of stuff that happened when they were at school together. The whole section on Brakebills was basically just worldbuilding.
Not that the plot, when you get to it, is really worth the slog. I'm looking forward to seeing how it's handled in the TV show because so far the creators of the tv series have just taken Lev Grossman's ideas and made them 1,000% better on all counts.
This book also fell into the relatively common trap for the first book in a series of having an ending that wasn't an ending. There was no plot resolution and no real catharsis for any of the characters. The last chapter might just as well have been a trailer for the second book.
I said in the Goodreads thread and I still firmly believe that the entire first half of the book could be condensed down to a few lines of backstory here and there and the book itself could start at "Book II / Manhattan." There isn't any significant plot development in the first half of the book that wouldn't be done just as well and possibly better as an eluded-to backstory of stuff that happened when they were at school together. The whole section on Brakebills was basically just worldbuilding.
Not that the plot, when you get to it, is really worth the slog. I'm looking forward to seeing how it's handled in the TV show because so far the creators of the tv series have just taken Lev Grossman's ideas and made them 1,000% better on all counts.
This book also fell into the relatively common trap for the first book in a series of having an ending that wasn't an ending. There was no plot resolution and no real catharsis for any of the characters. The last chapter might just as well have been a trailer for the second book.