Quentin still can’t get no satisfaction.

This was the main theme of the first novel of the Magician Trilogy (The Magicians). The emptiness in your life follows you even if you accomplish the things you long for. You can’t put a square block in a round hole. The Magician King begins with King Quentin still longing for that missing something.

What Quentin gets is a quest—a massive, no holds barred quest for the future of the entire multiverse. The plot is unpredictable and satisfying, at least for the reader. For Quentin, it’s another story.

I suppose we’ll find out in Volume Three, The Magician’s Land, if Quentin ever learns, let alone finds what he’s looking for.

—Lev Grossman, The Magician King (New York: Plume, 2011).