Sad ending

The Magicians does not have a happily ever after ending.  It didn't promise to be a fairy tale, though it borrowed from them heavily, and especially from the Chronicles of Narnia.

This paragraph scorched me:

The grief he felt for Alice kept unfolding new dimensions he hadn't known were there.  He felt like he'd only seen and loved her, really loved her, for those last few hours.  Now she was gone, broken like the glass animal she'd made that first day they'd met, and the rest of his life lay in front of him like a barren, meaningless postscript.

Exactly. I wonder if the author has lost someone close to him.

I would not say it's a great book, but I'm glad to have listened to it.  Some significant originality and creativity mixed in with all the borrowings.