Here's the second of the Magician trilogy by Lev Grossman. The Magician King entertains and although it has more than its share of Narnian undertones, it is definitely not predictable.
Page 97-98: That was the thing about the world: it wasn't that things were harder than you thought they were going to be, it was that they were hard in ways that you didn't expect.
Page 115: The students watched the three of them pass, propped up on their elbows, full of lofty pity for those who had been stupid enough to graduate and get older.
Page 165-166: Everybody wanted to be the hero of their own story. Nobody wanted to be comic relief.
Page 248: These waves came sloping in smoothly, building up heads of boiling cream foam on top, reared up for a moment, mint green and paper-thin in the sunlight, then broke in a long line with a sound like fabric tearing.
