The series comes with many recommendations and is supposed to be a version of Harry Potter with a slightly older reader in mind.

I never warmed to the protagonist Quentin. He's a disillusioned, self-pitying college student anti-hero who never seems to find happiness anywhere even when he reaches one goal after another. I could have lived with that. But he is also kind of a coward. All the heroic moments in this book go to other characters, and few enough of those are in there. And then there's Quentin's continuous bounce between genius and massive incompetence and insecurity. I just can't identify with that. I guess I am not the target demographic.

That which I look most for in Fantasy novels is not present in this book, maybe even on purpose to break out of the genre's tropes? It's a gritty realism, that takes all the magic out of magic for me. I want heroism, adventure and a sense of wonder. But all of that remains buried under the weight of dreary detail that the protagonist and his friends have to trudge through and drowned in the copious amounts of alcohol they consume for no good reason. For me this combination doesn't work.

The writing style and I don't get along. Especially not the pointless out-of-character art references Quentin keeps making. Additionally, up to around 70% of the book the plot seems largely episodic. It takes until then to see the threads that tie it all together. The book bored me and I had to force myself to finish reading it.