pedestrienne

Halfway through reading this I bought a copy for my own personal library. There was pretty much no way I was going to hate it, being a total Narnia nerd in my youth--there's a Narnia stand-in called Fillory in this novel and it plays a large part.

Luckily, the writing and story held up to the hype. The fantasy predecessors of this type of story are often name-checked and good-naturedly mocked, but this isn't just a meta-riff on the magical boarding school/quest--it is also an iteration in and of itself. And it felt like a long time coming, so even though the mocking was sometimes a little obvious, I ate it up. Near the end, at one point, I stepped outside of my mind's eye and thought, wait, this is just being fantasy now. By setting you up in a real world that has a real college of magic with students scoffing at Harry Potter and then leading you into a real magical adventure, Grossman makes the immersion that much more delicious.

Yet, as a protagonist, Quentin is lacking. I never believed in him, and his personality was wishy-washy. And so at times I got tired that he was leading me through everything. He doesn't believe in himself, sure, so it makes sense, but it still wasn't an enjoyable wishy-washy narrator (they do exist). Which is why this is only getting 4 stars.

RE-Read, November 2013.
As I re-read this I saw more and more how everything is filtered through Quentin's eyes and thoughts and kept disliking Quentin more and more. The power of the world is enough for me to continue really liking the book, but it's a mediated admiration. I wonder how much Quentin's dislikability was a choice. It affects the depictions of the women in the book a whole lot, to the book's detriment.