Look. We all know the feeling. You finish Lev Grossman’s trilogy and suddenly everything else feels a little too... shiny. A little too "chosen one" and not enough "depressed grad student accidentally breaks the universe." It’s a specific itch. You want the sense of wonder, sure, but you also want the hangover, the bad decisions, and the existential dread that comes with realizing magic doesn't actually fix your personality flaws.
Finding books like The Magicians isn't just about looking for wizards in school. If that were the case, you could just go back to Hogwarts and be done with it. No, what we’re chasing here is that specific brand of "literary portal fantasy" where the characters are deeply relatable, often unlikable, and the stakes feel uncomfortably high because the magic is messy. It's about the subversion of the tropes we grew up with.
Why Brakebills Ruined Traditional Fantasy For You
Grossman did something mean. He took the Narnia and Harry Potter blueprints and filled them with people who actually talk like us. Quentin Coldwater is a mess. He's self-absorbed, obsessed with a childhood fantasy, and convinced that a magical world will make him happy. When it doesn't? That's when the story actually starts.
Most people searching for similar reads are actually looking for three things: the "Dark Academia" vibe, the deconstruction of fairy tales, or the "magic is a dangerous drug" metaphor. You aren't going to find that in a generic high-fantasy epic about a farm boy saving a kingdom. You need stories where the world is gray.
The Ninth House and the Brutality of Secret Societies
If the "college but with demons" aspect of The Magicians was your favorite part, you have to read Leigh Bardugo’s Ninth House. Honestly, it makes Brakebills look like a playground. It follows Alex Stern, a girl who can see ghosts (Grays) and gets a full ride to Yale to help oversee the eight secret societies that use dark magic to manipulate global finance and politics.
It's gritty. It's very adult. Bardugo doesn't shy away from the trauma of the past or the corruption of the present. Unlike Quentin, Alex isn't a fan of magic; she’s a survivor of it. The sequel, Hell Bent, only cranks the stakes higher. It captures that same "adults doing dangerous things behind closed doors" energy that made the first half of Grossman's first book so addictive.
Vita Nostra: The Weirdest Magic School You’ll Ever Visit
Sometimes people recommend Vita Nostra by Sergey and Marina Dyachenko and I have to warn them: this book will hurt your brain. It’s often called "The Russian Magicians." It is not a fun romp. It’s a psychological thriller where the students are forced into a school where the curriculum is literally stripping away their humanity to turn them into parts of a cosmic language.
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The fear is real. The stakes aren't about winning a Quidditch match; they're about not ceasing to exist as a person. It's dense, weird, and incredibly rewarding if you liked the more philosophical, "magic is hard work" bits of Grossman’s writing.
Deconstructing the Portal Fantasy
The second half of The Magicians is basically a love letter (and a middle finger) to C.S. Lewis. Fillory is Narnia if Narnia were a place that actually had a biology, a history, and a god that was kind of a jerk.
Every Heart a Doorway and the "After"
Seanan McGuire’s Wayward Children series starts with Every Heart a Doorway. It asks the most important question Grossman asked: what happens when you come back?
Quentin was miserable in Brooklyn because he knew Fillory existed. McGuire’s characters are children who found their own "doors"—to worlds of candy, or worlds of death, or worlds of logic—and then got kicked out. They’re stuck in a boarding school for kids who are "broken" because they can't handle the mundane world anymore. It’s short, punchy, and captures that bittersweet longing for a home that isn't on any map.
The Starless Sea: A Different Kind of Library
Erin Morgenstern’s The Starless Sea is more whimsical than The Magicians, but it shares that DNA of being a "book about people who love books." If you liked the sections where Quentin researches the history of the Chatwins, you’ll vibe with this. It’s a sprawling, non-linear story about an underground library and the people who protect it. It’s less cynical than Grossman, but it treats magic with the same sense of ancient, heavy importance.
The "Messy Adult" Magic Genre
Let’s be real. Part of why The Magicians worked was because the characters were twenty-somethings making terrible romantic choices while also having the power to level a city.
- The Atlas Six by Olivie Blake: This started as a self-published sensation for a reason. Six mages compete for five spots in a secret society. It’s all about ego, horniness, and betrayal. It’s very "Brakebills South."
- Bunny by Mona Awad: Okay, this is "The Magicians" if it were a fever dream set in an MFA program. It’s weird, culty, and explores how friendship can be its own kind of dark magic.
- The Library at Mount Char by Scott Hawkins: This is for the people who liked the cosmic horror elements. It’s about "liberians" who are basically demi-gods trained by a terrifying father figure. It is violent, strange, and brilliant.
What Most People Get Wrong About These Books
A lot of recommendation engines will point you toward A Discovery of Witches or The Name of the Wind. Those are fine books, but they aren't books like The Magicians.
Why? Because they're too earnest.
The Magicians succeeds because it is fundamentally skeptical of its own premise. It knows that giving a depressed person a magic wand just creates a depressed person who can accidentally turn their classmates into glass. If a book doesn't have that layer of self-awareness or "literary weight," it's not going to satisfy the same craving.
The nuance lies in the "magic as a burden" trope. In Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke, magic is a lost academic art that is boring, dusty, and then suddenly, terrifyingly alive. It’s a long read—seriously, it’s a doorstopper—but it treats the supernatural with the same intellectual rigor that Grossman applied to his world-building.
The Real-World Magic of Dark Academia
The genre has exploded lately, but many new entries feel like they're just wearing a costume. To find something that resonates, look for authors who aren't afraid of the "unpleasantness" of their protagonists.
R.F. Kuang’s Babel is a perfect example. It’s historical fantasy, but it uses magic (via silver-working and translation) to talk about colonialism and the cost of being part of an elite institution. It’s angry. It’s smart. It captures that feeling of being a student who realizes the "golden halls" of their university are built on something dark. That’s the core of the Brakebills experience.
Your Reading Path Forward
Don't just jump into the next "magic school" book you see on a shelf. You have to categorize what you’re actually missing from the trilogy.
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If you miss the cynicism and the graduate school grind, go with Ninth House.
If you miss the portal fantasy and the deconstruction of Narnia, go with Every Heart a Doorway.
If you miss the pure, brain-melting weirdness of the magic, go with Vita Nostra.
If you miss the complex, often toxic friendships, go with The Atlas Six.
The best thing you can do right now is step away from the Young Adult section. The Magicians was a response to YA, but it was written for adults who grew up and realized that a letter from an owl wouldn't have actually solved their problems. Seek out "Adult Contemporary Fantasy" or "Literary Fantasy."
Start with Ninth House. It’s the most logical successor. It has the academic setting, the secret history, and a protagonist who is just as tired of everyone's nonsense as Quentin was, but with significantly more survival skills. Once you finish that, move into the more experimental stuff like The Library at Mount Char. You'll find that the "post-Magicians" void is actually a pretty great place to be because it leads you to books that aren't afraid to be a little broken.