Up until the 90%, it's an okay book. Not The Magicians, I'm afraid. Seems like the story is attempting to replicate Quentin's teenage angst but not quite succeeding. Quentin is still a solid mix of whines and hesitation, but at this point, he seems to just be going through the motions without truly feeling his (numerous) existential crisis. It seems like posturing. I'm not buying his moral troubles, and so, I care very little about their outcome.

But still, it would have been an okay read. Except that almost at the end of the book, we're told that a god raped Julia and that is a big part of the reason why she is becoming less human. And then I was like, okay Grossman, I can excuse your blatant sexism (I cannot, really, but I already put up with it for several hundred pages), but I draw the line at rapes for the sake of shock value. And so, the book ends on the worst note possible, taints the regard I had for its predecessor, and makes me wish I had never continued reading.

I so wish The Magicians had been a stand-alone novel.