The deeper they rolled into Fillory, the shakier Quentin felt, but Eliot was the opposite: he just got calmer and more sure of himself, exactly the way Quentin had thought he, Quentin, would, and exactly the way that he wasn’t.

1) That sentence structure is giving me hives.

2) I might feel a smidge of sympathy if you weren’t such a shit in ways completely unconnected to depression.

Anyway, Ember’s Tomb isn’t really, because Ember isn’t dead. Instead it’s some deeply significant place that gets repurposed as something else every eon or so.

Alice doesn’t want to go in, because [reason not found]. Suddenly a giant anthropomorphic hare and ferret come running at them from the tomb, we get some pretty basic description of what they look like, and suddenly Q is all “oh my god, this is it, we’re all going to die” because….[reason not found].

Like, why is this the limit of Q’s tolerance? And also why does this book keep giving me the most bland descriptions of things ever and then just informing me that it’s scary, no really, I promise, it’s very scary, see Q is terrified because he said so.

The two guides take care of the attackers (because they are attackers) while Q is like OMG THIS IS THE MOST TERRIBLE THING TO HAVE EVER HAPPENED TO ME also he just…stands there, in no danger. Because of these handy helpers that just appeared and offered help and none of these kids had to expend any effort at all for any of this to happen.

As a teenager in Brooklyn Quentin had often imagined himself engaging in martial heroics, but after this he knew, as a cold and immutable fact, that he would do anything necessary, sacrificing whatever or whomever he had to, to avoid risking exposure to physical violence.

???????????? It wasn’t even that much of a fight, dude. Like, he’s terrible but that’s okay, it’s the least of his flaws so far, but ……………………………???????????????????????????????????????? That, that little bit of a nothing fight that you didn’t even participate in is what causes you to think “fuck all of my companions, I would literally throw them under a bus rather than fight”????

Mm, r-slur, add it to the list of this book’s crimes. I hate everything about this book.

Okay, to give Q more credit, their guides did kill the two giant furry fighters, and that’s worth some horror. He does the whole song and dance about “but why did we have to kill them, I didn’t think killing someone would be like that” and okay, fine, an acceptable progression. But…like…maybe actually put all that horror in the action, and not just

So we killed them.

OH MY LIFE IS CHANGED FOREVER AND I SHALL BE A COWARD NOW AND KILLING IS SO TERRIBLE!

If ever a scene needed ‘show don’t tell’ it’s this one.

Also, apparently Anais liked the fight and she’s all bloodthirsty now. ‘Bout time she actually got a personality trait after randomly showing up many chapters ago but doing nothing.

Four hours and three flights of stairs and one mile of empty corridor later

Four hours? FOUR HOURS? To go one mile? Were you low crawling the whole way? A mile is 20 minutes, 30 tops.

And sure, it’s probably not meant to be exact, but it does show off just how little anyone involved in this publication bothers to care about details. They can’t even throw out random guestimates without making their characters look ridiculous.

So anyway, Q is wandering around when a door bursts open and a whole bunch of ‘bad guys’ jump out! Oh no! Q casts Magic Missile! It’s super effective!

Hey, remember two pages ago when violence was the worst thing ever and he was just shattered from having witnessed it? Yeah, that’s done with, he’s super pumped now.

Fen and Dint arrive and suddenly it’s all battle. Alice gets cornered by an elf, and she looks like she’s trying to surrender for mercy, but then the little demon she got at graduation jumps out and makes a bloody mess of her attacker. And then the battle is over.

That wasn’t so bad, he told himself. This wasn’t such a nightmare.

Wha….ju….wh…..how….. WHAT?

Four hours ago you claimed readiness to doom everyone to save your own ass after SOMEONE ELSE fought off TWO attackers, now after doing a murder yourself and also a bigger battle you’re like “eh, it’s okay”?????????????????????????

How is he the absolute worst in any given situation?

Also, Janet has a handgun.

Yeah, I don’t know either.

It got colder the deeper they went. At six stories underground Quentin was shivering in his heavy sweater and thinking nostalgically about the warm puffy parkas they’d abandoned way back by the sunny little stream.

Why are the parks continuing to be a thing? I don’t get it. Just have them or don’t, but this is really weird.

They come to a stop and Alice finally deigns to talk to Q, so Q immediately berates her about sleeping with Penny. Alice is all shamefaced about it and says she did it to get back at him but the sex wasn’t even all that good.

Fucking god, has there ever been a conversation so clearly made up by a man?

Q does not accept her tepid ‘I think I might have done an oops’ and continues to hate her because HE IS THE WORST and of course no one brings up him sleeping with Janet first and somehow it just occurred to me how completely banal this is. It’s just…the most basic relationship drama ever and I’m bored.

Alice wants to go home and Q insults her, because of course he does, he’s the worst.

Alice calls him out for being a little shit who’s always looking for the next magic fix to start his ‘real life’ but is perpetually unsatisfied and always will be because he can’t face up to the fact that his life is already his real life. Okay, fine, all well and good, but

Earlier in the fight he called Alice a mouse.

As part of her set-down she’s like “hey, I’ll stop being a mouse if you’ll realize yada yada magic fixes.”

And when has Alice EVER BEEN THE TYPE TO NOT TAKE CHANCES? She literally bullied her way into Brakebills, she and Q were the only two to do that moronic South Pole test at the end (and she beat him), she’s better at magic than him, she does cooler magic than him (remember catch a quark final thesis vs Q’s “I’m gonna fly to the moon but also not really”????). And then she just up and folds to his description of her as if it’s true because this book cannot stick to a consistent characterization.

It just can’t. Character development – hell, character displaying, is not within the skill set this novel displays.

Fuck, Alice still wants to fix their “relationship” which I have yet to be convinced actually even exists.

So they make out and I just throw my hands in the air and go to make more tea because fucking this book.

Okay so the group is lost and wandering deeper and deeper into the Tomb. Eventually they come into a big giant dining hall that has lots of side doors, but then length of it goes on (maybe?) infinity. Suddenly they get rushed by masses of anthropomorphic animal/human/other animal mash-ups, and there’s a big fight and run. It’s (finally) suitably tense and dangerous. It only ends when an enormous burning metal giant enters the fray, and the group splits up into random tunnels to get away from it.

Eliot and Q wind up finding each other afterwards and…

Talk about Anais and Dint had sex. Because, of course. That’s how you know it’s an ADULT book full of ADULT things, because there’s lots of sex.

“I’ll tell you something else funny,” Eliot went on. “I don’t regret coming here. Even now that it’s all gone to shit. I’m still glad I came.

1) This…is literally such a standard part of any portal fantasy???? What were you expecting???????

2) Why? Just, fucking, why? This place is not amazeballs. The only reason Narnia works as an amazing environment is that the kids were coming from a very dull hum-drum life, but you snotballs (presumably) were already full of magic and wonderment and special things and nothing here is fundamentally different and also IT’S ONLY BEEN LIKE TWO DAYS AND YOU HAVEN’T HAD A SINGLE SIGNIFICANT INTERACTION WITH ANYONE.

Lucy fell in love with Narnia because she made friends Mr. Tumnus. They sat and had dinner with Beaver family and enjoyed lovely hospitality. They MET GOD. They made connections with other characters in a real (if simplified, because kids book) way. These little pusstoes have done nothing except show up and be handed things from automatons. They have no connection to this place and no reason to think it’s any more amazing than the magic they can already do at home, and also home has big screen TVs and cars and shopping malls when, frankly, seems a lot better than hobbit-hotels, at least in a long term sense.

WHY DO ANY OF YOU CHARACTERS EVER LIKE THINGS? THE FACT THAT I’M HAVING TO ASK THIS QUESTION IS SUCH A HUGE FUCKING FAILURE.