I read it a few months after it came out and I remember hating it, but with a lot less detail than you lay out here.
What I remember most vividly was post-graduation when they're all spinning their wheels and meditating on the uselessness of everything, and rolling their eyes over someone they knew who's trying to use magic to solve real-world problems because UGH EVERYTHING IS POINTLESS. That scene annoyed me deeply (now I'm wondering -- is this scene actually in there, or did I create it in my head by implication?) and I compared the whole book unfavorably to another magic-in-the-real-world series I'm very fond of, Diane Duane's Wizardry series. (Part of me still wants to believe that the magic in those books is REAL.)
I disliked the first book so intensely I have not picked up the sequels.
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What I remember most vividly was post-graduation when they're all spinning their wheels and meditating on the uselessness of everything, and rolling their eyes over someone they knew who's trying to use magic to solve real-world problems because UGH EVERYTHING IS POINTLESS. That scene annoyed me deeply (now I'm wondering -- is this scene actually in there, or did I create it in my head by implication?) and I compared the whole book unfavorably to another magic-in-the-real-world series I'm very fond of, Diane Duane's Wizardry series. (Part of me still wants to believe that the magic in those books is REAL.)
I disliked the first book so intensely I have not picked up the sequels.