Rainbow Rowell’s Carry On is officially out October 6th. If you’ve read any of Rainbow Rowell’s previous work, you know that she is a tremendously talented writer (Eleanor & Park, Fangirl, Attachments, Landline). Okay, okay, I may be Fangirl-ing a little hard, here (pun fully intended).
Read this if you…
read and loved Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell, the Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowling, Fan Art by Sarah Tregay.
love magic schools.
love vampires.
What you need to know:
Simon Snow and Baz Pitch (full name: Tyrannus Basilton Pitch) are wizards at Watford School of Magicks who are training to become magicians. Simon Snow, an orphan with roots in the Normal world, is not just a wizard, but the wizard – The Chosen One, fated to battle against the magic-eating Insidious HumDrum to save the World of Mages. Baz is a wizard, a vampire, and from an old family that hates Normals. Baz is the Draco Malfoy to Simon’s Harry Potter. They share a room and they hate each other. Can they survive their final year and destroy the HumDrum without destroying each other?
We can’t talk about Carry On without first mentioning Fangirl, because Carry On is itself a spin-off of Fangirl. The protagonist of Fangirl, Cath Avery, wrote fan-fiction based on the Simon Snow series by author Gemma T. Leslie. In Carry On, Simon and Baz take centre stage for their own story.
Final thoughts:
I loved J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series and Fangirl, which made Carry On a must-read for me. It’s a glorious tribute to Harry Potter as well as being all its own story at the same time. I wish Rowell had worked in more information about the World of Mages and all Simon and Baz’s various adventures in, because this book really reads like it’s the last part of a series. Rowell does a great job making you care about the characters, but it would be more effective if we’d been along on the ride with them (maybe Rowell can write the first ever fantasy series written in reverse?). I loved it, and I’m sad that it’s already finished. I guess I’ll need to read some fanfiction about it now…
Final Score: 4 out of 5
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