Krishna
This is a fantasy book. About magic. Like most others, I like magic, right? I like fantasy, right? So I should just love this book, right? Wrong!
Why? Read on. Let us start with the story.
James, Julia and Quentin are friends. They are in school and are very highly intelligent. Quentin is in love with Julia and is upset that she has eyes only for James.
He goes for an interview and reads a lot of fantasy books. When he reaches the building, he finds no one answers the doorbell but the door opens when pushed. The house is in total darkness and he stumbles onto a dead body on the floor.
The police come to take his statements and when both Quentin and James are offered a book each (already wrapped and with their names on it), James refuses but Quentin takes it. James then goes to meet Julia and while Quentin tries a shortcut, he gets moved to a different place and learns that he is now in a different part of New York. He meets Elliot, a strange looking but affable man, who asks him to wait on a bench and leaves him.
He meets Henry Fogg, a Dean, who asks him if he wants to write the entrance exam for the University. Quentin says ‘Yes’ and is led into the building. He takes a weird test filled with seemingly pointless questions (guess what card it is by staring at the other side of it in a picture), some serious questions (calculus for example) a rabbit that started running as soon as he drew it, and so on. Finally he looks up to see much of the room empty, though he had not seen the students leave.
The instructor comes to say that the people left have all moved to the second level of the test – to be done on a one on one basis.
After the regular tests, they all come and “force” him to do some real magic and to his own astonishment, Quentin does – the cards he throws up fall into the pattern of the building they are in and the coins coalesce into a long sword!
He and Alice, a shy girl who has advanced magic powers, and a boy called Penny are double promoted to senior years and form a bond of friendship. He knows more about Alice.
When he goes home for five days of vacation he finds that all he found charming earlier – his cramped room in his parents’ house, and even the friendship of James and Julia has palled. He knows that his true home is back at the magical university.
He starts his Second year with the Physicals, an exclusive group. In one of the classes he thinks he has invited The Best from another world (dimension?) into the class room and one of the resisting students is killed.
One of their fellow students, Jason, does not seem to be able to control his magic in a group game devised to improve morale of the students.
They turn into geese and fly to the Brakebill South, in Antartica and meet xxx, an eccentric but knowledgeable teacher. They turn into other animals, practice nonstop magic and then, as a final exam, is sent off to wander in the Antarctic without clothes and reach the South Pole. Of course they can use magic charms to keep warm etc. If the do it wrong, they could die. Though the exam is optional, Quentin of course opts to go.
He passes and when he is back in his town, he meets Julia and finds how out of love he has now become with her. When he goes back, he and Alice start a relationship that both seem to enjoy.
Once he graduates, the story takes a huge nosedive. They all seem to have lost the will to do anything at all and spend time in petty quarrels and sizing up other people’s boyfriend or girlfriend. And there are some esoteric debates so airy that it all seems pointless. This is an example of how not to move the plot forward, if there is one.
It just goes all over the place and you wonder if the author is simply filling pages to make the book of sufficient thickness for publication.
Ane Quentin is simply nasty. To everyone. He quarrels, does not know what he wants and is totally obnoxious. And he is the hero? The plot just explodes all over the place. Even evil talking bunnies and vicious ferrets cannot save it. (Don’t ask!) You are thoroughly bored with the story about now.
Finally they meet a wounded talking ram which was supposed to be the old king and the Beast that scared everyone in Brakebills finally appears and assumes the crown. It is one of the characters in the Fillory books.All supposed to be a big twist but by now I was bored with where it was going and the sheer unreasonableness of almost everyone in the book, both good and bad, that it just passed by me with almost no impact.
The magical battle with the surprising monster they face is interesting, but does it come too late for me to get into the story? This probably was the best ten pages or so in the book but this is not a compliment.
Then the story descends into arbitrariness again. When Quentin goes in search of a white stag – don’t ask – he sees several creatures that are magical and strange ‘but he passes them by because he was not interested in them at all’. Okaaaaaay….
What he does when he finds it is bizarre and the conversation that follows (yes, all animals, except the ‘real animal’ horse he rid on earlier, can talk) is even more bizarre.
And the ending is abrupt with rapid turnings of phase.
Can’t understand why this is so sought after. It looked like reckless plotting to me.
Sorry, I won’t be able to join the fan club. Pardon me.
2/ 10
— Krishna