Fantasy & Science Fiction magazine has a long piece about The Magician's Book and two other titles -- Cheek by Jowl, an essay collection by Ursula K. Le Guin, and a new novel, The Magicians, by Lev Grossman, which comes out on August 11. Even if Lev (book critic for Time magazine) weren't a good friend, I'd be fervently recommending The Magicians to everyone who fell under the spell of Narnia or Harry Potter as a child and has been thinking about what this means to the adults we've become.

It...