But I’m not going to read more of the series if it’s all soul-sucking joylessness like the real world and Fillory sections.
I loved Brakebills, was meh on Quentin, meh on Fillory, and LOVED the female characters. But. Remember how Alice basically gets fridged at the end of this one? I will just say that kind of plotting continues in the second and third books. There is even more emphasis on Quentin and his manpain and his Learning Stuff, and I was interested in everything else, particularly the women. But the women just get used as occasions for Quentin to Learn Stuff and feel manpain and suffer greater and lesser damage to that end.
The second book has a wonderful female character and half the book is from her POV, but she gets shafted. But, without spoiling you too much, she doesn't go the Gifted Young Wizard-in-Training Gets a Golden Ticket route, and that was fascinating. I love hedgewitches and I love the idea that there's this other way of learning magic besides the regimented Brakebills one.
I didn't find the third....uplifting? The first third or so is quite good and has a BEAUTIFUL payoff, which instantly ruined the whole rest of the book for me because I wanted the story about what happened to a character -- yet another interesting woman who gets dropped in favour of Quentin and his Learning Things -- and no, the rest of the book is about Quentin and his Learning Things, and near the end of the book Grossman just starts baldly spelling out what he thinks people should take away from the trilogy, as if he's desperate that he hasn't communicated it via the people and the events. When people start telling each other what they have Learned in very stilted dialogue in final chapters, that is never a good sign.
I didn't think the idea was that great as a redrafting of Narnia. He maps his three books explicitly to the seven Chronicles, two into one, leaving out Horse and His Boy, and the The Magician's Nephew/The Last Battle attempt especially just falls really flat. I was hoping one thing we might see in this series is something from the POV of the talking beasts or native peoples -- what do they think of these young white bratty kids who just show up and are automatic royalty? -- but no dice. But a lot of the descriptions of magic and how it works are really good -- almost reminded me of Le Guin's stuff. But Quentin is between the reader and everything, and while I didn't hate him as much as some people I know did, I just got frustrated with everything being about him because he was just pretty damn dull. Especially when compared with all the women, who just popped off the page.
tl;dr I'd recommend the second book with extreme reservations because of the (spoiler) but the third wasn't really worth it for me, too frustrating.
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I loved Brakebills, was meh on Quentin, meh on Fillory, and LOVED the female characters. But. Remember how Alice basically gets fridged at the end of this one? I will just say that kind of plotting continues in the second and third books. There is even more emphasis on Quentin and his manpain and his Learning Stuff, and I was interested in everything else, particularly the women. But the women just get used as occasions for Quentin to Learn Stuff and feel manpain and suffer greater and lesser damage to that end.
The second book has a wonderful female character and half the book is from her POV, but she gets shafted. But, without spoiling you too much, she doesn't go the Gifted Young Wizard-in-Training Gets a Golden Ticket route, and that was fascinating. I love hedgewitches and I love the idea that there's this other way of learning magic besides the regimented Brakebills one.
I didn't find the third....uplifting? The first third or so is quite good and has a BEAUTIFUL payoff, which instantly ruined the whole rest of the book for me because I wanted the story about what happened to a character -- yet another interesting woman who gets dropped in favour of Quentin and his Learning Things -- and no, the rest of the book is about Quentin and his Learning Things, and near the end of the book Grossman just starts baldly spelling out what he thinks people should take away from the trilogy, as if he's desperate that he hasn't communicated it via the people and the events. When people start telling each other what they have Learned in very stilted dialogue in final chapters, that is never a good sign.
I didn't think the idea was that great as a redrafting of Narnia. He maps his three books explicitly to the seven Chronicles, two into one, leaving out Horse and His Boy, and the The Magician's Nephew/The Last Battle attempt especially just falls really flat. I was hoping one thing we might see in this series is something from the POV of the talking beasts or native peoples -- what do they think of these young white bratty kids who just show up and are automatic royalty? -- but no dice. But a lot of the descriptions of magic and how it works are really good -- almost reminded me of Le Guin's stuff. But Quentin is between the reader and everything, and while I didn't hate him as much as some people I know did, I just got frustrated with everything being about him because he was just pretty damn dull. Especially when compared with all the women, who just popped off the page.
tl;dr I'd recommend the second book with extreme reservations because of the (spoiler) but the third wasn't really worth it for me, too frustrating.