Some undetermined number of months later (four?) Q gets held behind after class with Alice (glass animal girl) and Penny (boy who ordered too much water during the test). They are all being offered the chance to take their exams early and advance to Second Year.

Here’s yet another way that that montage really throws off the pacing of this book. We have yet to see Q do anything meaningful in the way of his magic school work, because we have yet to actually stick around for an entire class. All we have is a broad summary of things he’s been learning, but we haven’t seen him learning or his reactions to all of this. Also way to pull up Penny again after whole chapters of being missing. It really wouldn’t have been hard to show this stuff.

I’m not a huge stickler for “show don’t tell,” and a lot of what we got in the montage absolutely should have been told. But you can’t tell a character. You can tell events, especially repetitive ones, and you can tell some of your worldbuilding. But character traits cannot be told. For the most part, that is. And Q’s reactions to magic and his ability to handle it and his feelings towards and his FING SKILLS AND ABILITIES especially as he’s being introduced to all of this should not come as an off-hand line.

Oh, and we jump right from that page-long scene into another montage, jfc, we’re reaching Tomorrow, When the War Began levels of stuff-not-happening-on-page.

[…] as hard he’d worked up till now, he still somehow imagined that learning magic would turn out to be a delightful journey through a secret garden where he would gaily pluck the heavy fruit of knowledge from conveniently low-hanging branches.

I refuse to believe Q was ever in a gifted/genius program.

REFUSE.

Even for an upper-middle-class white dude, this is some bullshit. This is firmly in the realm of mediocre upper-middle-class white dude.

[Professor Sunderland] looked nothing like a magician was supposed to: she was blond and dimply and distractingly curvy.

Fuck, the book is back on this train. Back on ‘not only is Q an ass, but we’re in 3^rd person narration so that’s the book saying she doesn’t look like a magician. Book can’t even through in a qualifier like nothing like what Q expected a magician to look like. Which would still be bad, but at least less bad than this.’

He almost felt like he was betraying Julia. But what did he owe her? It’s not like she even would have cared. And Professor Sunderland was here. He wanted somebody who was part of his new world. Julia had her chance.

Yeah, and turned you down, so what the fuck is this line even here?

I mean, I get the feeling of having one crush, then having a new one and feeling irrationally guilty about it. I get that. It’s a weird feeling, but hey, that’s feelz for ya. But the rest of this is….

Also the professor is your teacher and far older than you, Q, but when has a woman’s disinterest ever stopped you from this sort of bullshit before, I guess.

Brakebills had an eleven-o’clock lights-out policy for First Years

Look, the only thing even vaguely interesting about this book from the get-go was “magic college” and you can’t even get the college part right, what the fuck are you even doing, book?

Quentin and Alice and Penny found themselves drawing apart from their classmates, who regarded them with envy and resentment that Quentin didn’t have the time or energy to deal with .

I mean, why would you since you didn’t have the time or energy to INTRODUCE ANY OF THEM to us in the first place?

This is such a meaningless line in a slew of meaningless lines.

The marathon cram-studying to get through a whole year faster continues for months and starts to wear on the three students.

He recognized the irritable, unpleasant, unhappy person he was becoming; he looked strangely like the Quentin he thought he’d left behind in Brooklyn.

1) When did you ever stop being that person? We don’t know because ALL WE’VE HAD ARE MONTAGES.

2) Then stop. Go back to just being in regular classes.

There’s no reason given for why they have to do this. Skipping ahead was an OFFER, not a requirement, and right now even the offer doesn’t make sense. It’s not like they were already advanced (well, Alice was) and just needed to test. Instead it seems like the argument is “you guys learn really fast, so why not just go through a whole year of school work all at once because reasons?” There’s no advantage to this, and it’s just hurting them to keep going at this pace.

Seriously. No advantage. No reason given. Just damage yourself with long hours and stress because…IDK got to have some reason for the main character to be more special than everyone else, I guess.

And then there is an…utterly bizarre scene where Q accidentally stumbles upon Eliot engaging in some light D/s power play and oral sex with another boy. Which, I mean, in and of itself isn’t bizarre, but that’s the thing that finally breaks up our telly-montage and gets an actual scene??? It comes so out of the blue, and then there’s…well…

Did he really have to hide like this? Even at Brakebills? On some level Quentin was hurt: If this was what Eliot wanted, why hadn’t he come after Quentin?

I….don’t know what to do with this?????? It’s so???????? Weird??????????????? Q, what is wrong with you????????????????????????????????????????

Also, hide? There’s no indication of if he means that Eliot likes to be a sub or that Eliot likes to perform oral sex with other boys, but either way, who the fuck said he was hiding? We’ve spent the entire school year in summary; for all we know he just fails to advertise his sexual orientation, which isn’t the same as hiding, and if it’s the D/s thing WHY WOULD THAT BE PUBLIC?

JFC, Q is the walking embodiment of that ‘I am uncomfortable when things aren’t about me’ bird meme.

We finally get a scene where Q talks to someone! Like, with dialogue and the other person also having dialogue and everything! He goes on a walk with Alice after another ridiculously long night of studying.

Quentin’s idea had been to walk out through the Maze […] and think about why this was turning out to be so much less fun than it should have been

BECAUSE YOUR AUTHOR REFUSES TO DO ANYTHING COOL WITH YOUR MAGIC, THAT’S WHY

I mean, if I were being fair I would say it’s the depression talking because that shit doesn’t go away just because magic is around and it makes everything harder, but also, nothing cool has happened so it’s also boring as shit for the reader, too.

Also also, trying to learn a whole year’s worth of fundamentals in a month (?) might have something to do with it.

Hell, we can make a whole fucking list if you want.

1. The lack of a cool factor.

2. The study pace.

3. The lack of an ultimate goal or motivation.

4. The lack of a sense of purpose.

5. The lack of a wider society.

6. The lack of friends (not entirely the world/school’s fault)

7. The isolation of the campus coupled with an apparent lack of entertainment or recreation or even social events

Just…man, considering what Eliot implied about most magic kids being depressed before they’re found, this place really isn’t set up to handle that well.

They wander around and make small talk, and then Alice mentions that she didn’t come in through a portal. She wasn’t invited, but she had an older brother in the school so she knew about it. She came in the mundane way, literally walking in from the nearest highway. Q finds this very odd since she so obviously can do magic and is very good at it. (Yeah, same, very odd.)

It occurred to him, long after it should have, that he wasn’t the only person here who had problems and felt like an outsider.

No shit ‘long after it should have,’ considering that was explicitly spelled out for you in a previous chapter.

Alice wasn’t just the competition, someone whose only purpose in life was to succeed and by doing so subtract from his happiness.

…o.o

Okay, so, it was off-hand enough before that I didn’t want to say anything, but I’m guessing now that this is set up for him to realize it’s not true later. Which…okay, I guess. But…that ain’t depression, or at least not inherently. That’s some Toxic Dude Cocktail right there. And if you’re going to be serving me that, you’d damn well better at least put it in a fancy glass.

What the hell was out there that was worth all this work? What were they doing it for? Power, he supposed, or knowledge. But it was all so ridiculously abstract. The answer should have been obvious. He just couldn’t quite name it.

How was no one involved in this publication process screaming THIS IS A SUPER OBVIOUS QUESTION AND YOU NEED TO FUCKING ANSWER IT ALREADY in the notes?

They take their advancement test, and Q and Alice pass but Penny fails. Dun dun dun, I guess?