Q is still listlessly hanging out at the empty college, except sometimes he runs into Eliot, who smokes contraband cigarettes and blathers endlessly about wine and art in the most pretentious manner.

Quentin had never met anybody so staggeringly and unapologetically affected.

I mean…I guess you can’t technically meet yourself, so that statement holds up, sure.

And then Q smokes his first cigarette because…peer pressure, I guess. From one peer. Who Q doesn’t even seem to like.

They hang out and Eliot spouts some random worldbuilding facts, like that Brakebills is about 3 months behind the rest of the world, seasons-wise, as a side effect of a different spell. And then…

Sigh.

And then he explains that everyone at Brakebills is ridiculously smart because only smart people can do magic.

We still don’t know what magic is in this world (besides the genre-trend nebulous idea of magic that most fantasy readers come in with) but from Eliot’s vague list of criteria, apparently you have to be very smart, very sad, very tough, and then also have some special ‘it’ to be able to do magic. Which implies either that magic is an inherent ability and Brakebills just ignores people who don’t meet their arbitrary standards of ‘smart,’ or that magic is an inherent ability that only presents in ‘smart’ people. Both are problematic – the first in-universe and the second meta – but I seriously doubt the book will address it either way. Because, clearly, this is only in here to make the main character more special.

Actually, the ‘obsessive and miserable’ part is probably a slightly-older version of that part of Percy Jackson where dyslexia is just Greek-brain in disguise. A way to give the reader some escapism fantasy and say “this thing that is greatly troubling to you is actually a secret sign than you’re uber special.”

Oh, a random homophobic joke. I would expect nothing less from this book, frankly.

Quentin liked to think of himself as a sort of regional champion of unhappiness, but he wondered if Eliot had him outclassed on that score, too.

This comes after Eliot talks about his family, soybean farms in Oregon, and mentions that they…are perfectly lovely people who are more of jock-ish persuasion and don’t really understand him. That’s it. That’s all we get. Somehow that’s enough to make Eliot refuse to go home over the summer and make Q just infinitely sorry for him.

Is there going to be a running theme of people having perfectly fine lives that are portrayed as The Worst? Which, while I get it from a depression standpoint (oh boy do I get it), it still seems weird when it goes beyond Q. Is it because you Have To Be Depressed in order to have magic, apparently? Still not loving that little shitnugget. Reminds me too hard of the art-as-misery trope which is both inaccurate and damaging.

As they drifted home, they were passed by a few other boats […]. The occupants looked grim and bundled-up against the cold, in gray sweatshirts and sweatpants. They couldn’t perceive, or somehow weren’t part of, the August heat that Quentin and Eliot were enjoying. They were warm and dry and didn’t even know it. The terms of the enchantment locked them out.

Mm, yes, you’re very smart and metaphorical book. Here, have a cookie.

Skip ahead to the first day of class.

“The study of magic is not a science, it is not an art, and it is not a religion. Magic is a craft. […] In any case, we do not and cannot understand what magic is, or where it comes from, any more than a carpenter understands why a tree grows. He doesn’t have to. He works with what he has.

1) Um, not knowing where it comes from doesn’t make it any less of a science? I mean, science doesn’t know a lot of things and it still science-es.

2) Lots of carpenters know things about botany, and specifically tree-related botany? Like, that’s a thing? What the fuck is this?

“With the caveat that it is much more difficult and much more dangerous and much more interesting to be a magician than it is to be a carpenter.”

If this book could stop sucking its own dick, that would be great.

So, tangent time, but that ‘not a science’ line is sticking to me. I really hate the idea that magic and science are diametrically opposed, because science is a process and people who use this line don’t seem to fucking understand that? It’s a way of observing and testing and learning, not a…thing? Like, if magic was real and you could wave your hand and say a word and get a result, that’s not not science, because you can see that happening and test the limits of it and learn how to get the same result each time? That is science. It’s a science only a few people can do because depression + genetics (I GUESS), but still.

And the weird part is there’s totally room for non-science magic in fantasy. You can make a magic system that defies the scientific process, where it cannot be observed or quantified, where results are not replicatable because magic is random, where all sorts of off-the-wall things happen. It is totally possible. MOST fantasies don’t go this route, they go the “magic has rules and we can observe and apply those rules to get consistent results” route, which is FINE and also GIVE ME ALL THE RULES I LOVE THAT SHIT, but stop writing it as opposed to science.

Also, as much as I do love science-magic, I would really love to seem so actually not-science-magic.

Also also, here’s a wooden robot because fuck you, carpentry is awesome.

So immediately after this little spiel, we get a flashback to that morning when…all of the students arrived. All 100 (98, minus Q and Eliot) arrived on the same morning that classes were due to start. Why? Look, the book was too busy patting itself on the back for inventing the urban fantasy genre but doing nothing with it, it doesn’t have time for things like reasonable timelines.

Also they have uniforms, so are we even sure this is a college?

Quentin knew that probably half the Intel Science Talent Search winners and Scripps Spelling Bee champions in the country were in this room.

Jeez, how much brain muckage is this school doing to the muggles? I mean, other people do track the winners of such things, not just parents.

As a demonstration, the professor (March) asks Q and another girl to come to the front and do magic. Q does stage magic, the girl does real magic, heating up a glass marble until she can pull it into an animal shape and then animating it.

“Thank you, Alice!” Processor March said, regaining the stage. “For those of you who are wondering, Alice just performed three basic spells.” He held up a finger for each one. “Dempsey’s Silent Thermogenesis; a less Cavalieri animation; and some kind of ward-and-shield that appears to be home-brewed, so maybe we should name it after you, Alice.”

But, you know, not science. Not at all. Tooooootally different.

Quentin watched the little drama with a mixture of compassion and rivalrous envy. Such a tender soul, eh thought. But [Alice]’s the one I’ll have to beat.

…beat at what? And why?

Professor March then…assigns reading and dismisses class, despite not teaching anything, just giving a vague little speech? ???????????????? He ends the class with the turtles all the way down story and then

“The woman was wrong about the world, of course, but she would have been quite right if she’d been talking about magic. Great mages have wasted their lives trying to get at the root of magic. It is a futile pursuit, not much fun and occasionally quite hazardous. Because farther down you go, the bigger and scalier the turtles get, with sharper and sharper beaks. Until eventually they start looking less like turtles and more like dragons.

I…just really don’t understand this narrative decision to warn people away from wondering how the world works? It’s probably foreshadowing, but it’s still just…

…do you not realize that physics is weird and thorny and contradictory and bizarre the further you get into it, book? All that fucking smarts you’re going on about, and you haven’t heard of quantum physics?