Quentin Coldwater is an average genius graduating from high school, who is lonely and in love with his best-friend's girlfriend. However soon enough he's whisked away to the magical School of Brakebills where he meets Eliot, charming, debonair, and alcohol snub who befriends Quentin, as well as shy and talented Alice who Quentin soon falls for. As five years pass by (in about one-hundred pages) Quentin sleeps with a fox, I mean Alice, the two of them move to Manhattan and soon after that begins binge-drinking, experimenting with drugs, partying, having crazy threesomes, and then they go to Narnia, killing Edmund and becoming kings and queens. I mean, no, they go to Fillory, sorry.
I have so many mixed feelings about this book I can't even say. While I truthfully enjoyed a lot of it, the writing was lovely in parts, rushed in others, and really uncomfortable and crude other times. The story had its high points, but was horribly disappointing in others, with character development put on fast-forward, and emotions and revelations so directly stated you have to be left wondering when it happened at all. I can't say I was fond of the book, though I did finish it, and enjoy large portions of it, the ending of the book was satisfying for me though much of the middle wasn't. Sometimes the cliches and the allusions felt charming, other times they felt like cheap jabs at the original stories much of the plot was so clearly mimicking. Yet despite this, I think my true problem with the book came with the relationship dynamic between Quentin, Alice, and Eliot.
Quentin is without doubt, an overly sexualized character who tends to objectify women. Without fail, every time a female character shows up, there are firm comments from his narration about their appearance, possible sexual orientation, and whether or not he would want to sleep with them. Through the course of the story he has three main female friends, Alice Julia, and Janet, he sleeps with two and wants to sleep with another, thus having a sexual relationship with all three of his female friends. For the first portion of Quentin's time at Brakebills he's in the company of his senior, Eliot, who is often admired by Quentin for his confidence, hard-earned aloofness, and his cool demeanor. Eliot is the first person Quentin meets at Brakebills. Later on Quentin discovers that Eliot is having a fling with another boy in Quentin's year, upon finding this out Quentin begins to weep because Eliot hadn't given his affections to Quentin. It is later discussed by other characters that many people think that Quentin is in a relationship with Eliot. However even with the developments in their relationship, Quentin soon has sex with Alice when they were both magically transformed into foxes and were together and in love thereafter. (???!!!???!?!?!?!?!?)
It seemed to me that Grossman miraculously ended up skipping over all of the relationship potential between Quentin and Eliot to simply further Quentin's very literal animal like sexual attraction for Alice. A relationship between him Eliot would have introduced immense complexity into Quentin's character, showing that he could have meaningful relationships with women without a sexual element being present, while choosing the present emotional bond he shares with Eliot, choosing emotion over sexual drive, for a character like Eliot who has somewhat severe facial maiming. I believe strong character development is the heart of any story, and when such an opportunity for such a strong point to be made in writing is passed up for mediocre, crude, and bizarre plot lines it disappoints me more than anything else in the story ever could have.
All in all, I doubt I will bother with the equals.
Total Pages: 402
Number of Flying Platypus Tea Cups: 4/10
How you described this book is so hilarious. Let's just say I don't think I'll be reading this book anytime soon... or ever. I don't really understand what the book is supposed to be about exactly and even if I did read the book, I'm not entirely convinced that would change at all. But very nice job sticking with it and your description amused me greatly!
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