The rest of Quentin’s Third Year at Brakebills went by beneath a gray watercolor wash of- wait.

The whole rest of the year?

So we’re skipping first year because testing or whatnot, skipping second year because they spent all of that just trying to get into second year, and now skipping third year because (reason not found)?

This book’s plot doesn’t actually take place at Brakebills, does it? The whole reason we’re trying to skip through as much as possible as fast as possible is to get through what is essentially set up so they can get to the actual plot?

Well…fuck that. If you want your plot to be outside of school, then DON’T START WITH A SCHOOL. Sheesh, give him an apprenticeship or having the opening chapter be him graduating, or at the very least actually set stuff up in this plodding marathon of set up. We know so little about the world and characters despite having spent so long with them because of all this surface level skimming.

Cleansing the auditorium was just a matter of ringing a few bells and burning sage in the corners

This book claims the magic system is built on exacting particulars which are unfathomable but when it needs to actually do some magic it’s all throwaway bullshit borrowed from fads which are in and of themselves just appropriation from others’ spiritual practices devoid of the proper setting and meaning.

This magic is only “turtles all the way down” because the author never examined the first turtle and just kept staking other random things on top of it.

In a way it was an education in itself, a chance to watch real magic being worked, with real things at stake. But there was no fun in it.

Yes. We get it. You’ve only been saying that for two years now. Find yourself some fucking fun already, or at least stop sounding shocked when fun is absent.

Also, they’re cleaning up after an attack, why did you think it would be fun?

Also, also, the whole description before that is of resetting invisible wards, so it’s just people doing things without any noticeable effect. There’s no learning going on from it (that we can tell from the text) because they’re not getting the students involved or telling them things.

Q cries about Fillory and how the world isn’t like that some more, and once again the narration acts like this is a new discovery for him. How many times can we go through the same “wow, magic school is still school” beat? Eventually it has to sink in, right?

So now it’s forth year and all the Physical kids are complaining about…being forced to play welters in a tournament. For “morale.”

I…can’t even begin to parse how much I don’t care. We’re a third of the way through the book right now and no one has done more than show us a field. We don’t even have rules for it. And now they’re doing nothing but complaining. So how on earth could I care? There’s no substance to care about.

The kids start playing but I still don’t know what the rules are because all the narration will tell me is “it was hellishly complex and also everyone’s drinking wine and progressively caring less and less.”

God, you are trying so hard to be counter-culture but you’re just a dick.

There’s a tournament and the Physical kids are good and win all their matches. That’s all we get.

I feel like this book was written by the author remembering all the fun things about Harry Potter one at a time and then just writing a whole chapter about that thing, rather than working all those things together side by side.

Apparently something’s going on with Josh, which would be interesting if I’d spent any time with this character. He doesn’t show up for the last game.

Professor Foxtree […] Students respected him instinctively because of his easy good humor and because he was tall and Native American.

Uh….whut?

So only options I can figure are 1) this author has never met a Native American and thus never heard about the massive amount of shit they are put through especially in academia or 2) thinks that Native American = magic and thus of course they’d be respected in a magic school or 3) both of the above.

Not a great set of options.

Q leaves the game to go find Josh while thinking fatphobic thoughts because of course he does. Whatever the worst option to think in a situation, that’s what Q goes for.

Several pages and pointless asides later, Q finds Josh in the library with a guy named Lovelady, who is basically a traveling tinker/salesman. Lovelady has been here the whole time, really, we just didn’t have time to tell you about him because…*waves hand vaguely*

Because the book doesn’t care about this school and just sees it as an unfortunate necessity, basically.

Q reminds Josh about the game and that they’re late.

“Oh, man,” he said again. Josh put his forehead down on the table, then looked up suddenly at Lovelady. “Got anything for time travel? Time-turner or something?”

“Not at this time,” Lovelady intoned gravely. “But I will make inquiries.”

“Awesome.” Josh stood up. He saluted smartly. “Send me an owl.”

….so….does…Harry Potter the book series exist in this world?

Josh is drunk and he suddenly starts going off on this long rant about how doing magic is really hard for him. Even though he’s good at the smarts part of it, when it comes to actual magical power, it’s a tossup whether or not that power is going to be available to him when he tries to cast a spell. Which…would be nice to actually see in action, but that would require us to actually have continuous character involvement instead of these vignettes.

That’s essentially what this book is, a series of vignettes. It’s not even episodic, because that implies that each subject actually gets concluded before moving on to the next.

Josh was trying to get something from Lovelady to help him with his magic, but was only offered junk, including some dust that Lovelady claims was “ Aleister Crowley’s ashes”.

Yes. Aleister Crowley. Yes, that Aleister Crowley. The real-life turn of the century occultist who laid down a lot of foundational stuff for modern pagan movements. I really, really hate it when urban fantasies co-opt real life people, but this one is especially irking me because Crowley WASN’T A MAGICIAN. He was a religious figure, and a very prominent one at that, living a public life that is well documented so where exactly in all that was he supposed to be involved in some secret magical society? What magic-as-portrayed-in-this-book did he do? All of his magic was religious/ceremonial. He was a prophet (to those that believe) and a philosopher. And the (to those that believe) being relevant because there are still believers. But books like this, I guess, figure that if a religion is small enough that makes it fair game to cannibalize for your story. Fuck that.

He was also bisexual, just felt like throwing that out there because I just now learned it.

But also, and a lesser complaint, it’s LAZY. Q just makes a quip about Lovelady being a hack and they drop the whole thing and move on because this wasn’t real worldbuilding. This was just references. If you want to know how an esoteric, bisexual prophet fits into the wider world of Brakebills? If you want to know if Crowley’s religious aspects have anything to do with why his ashes would be considered power-boosting? If you want to know if there’s even any religion at all in this world? Well haha, fuck you, no. It’s just something the author vaguely remembered as being sorta maybe at least adjacent to magic so it gets shoved in willy-nilly with no thought to any follow-on implications or meaning. It’s just as shallow and pointless as everything in Ready Player One.

Just like if you want to know what it means that the Harry Potter books exist in this world, you will likewise be disappointed. Is JRK a magician who broke some code of silence to write a fictionalized version of her school days? Is she just a really good/lucky investigator who found out about the edges of the truth about magic and filled in the rest with her own guesses? Was there any reaction beyond jokes when the books were published? Was Voldemort based on a wizard figure instead of WWII? Well, fuck you for even wondering, how dare you.

The game continues and we still have no idea what the rules are, just that everyone is extremely bored, and so am I. Then at the end, Q gets some sort of profound realization out of nowhere that actually nothing matters, so fuck it? I guess?

And then all this nihilism results in him throwing a heavy projectile at someone’s knee (!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!), randomly grabbing Alice, and jumping into the watery part of the game board. (!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!)

Q was always an asshole, but “actually, nothing matters, I’ve forgiven myself for summoning a monster that killed Amanda, and now I’m going to physically injure two people for no reason” is…a whole level by itself.