Yes, it's magical

Finished Lev Grossman's The Magician King, sequel to The Magicians. Holy freakin' gods (almost literally). I think I barely breathed through the last 50 pages.

Sometimes sequels live up to their predecessor. Very rarely they are better. Almost never are they exponentially better, managing to not only be awesome in their own right but also actually go back in your head and make the first one better retroactively.

This one did. It's dark, intriguing, brilliant, horrifying, sad, joyful, grim, seductive...a little bit of everything in just the right mixture. To quote another of my favorite books: It has "fencing, fighting, torture, revenge, giants, monsters, chases, escapes, true love, miracles..." It also has heroes, gods, dryads, sex, cruelty, lies, fear, true friendship, justice, mercy and death (real death, not the fake fantasy kind). Anything I could say about it wouldn't do it justice, so just go read it.