This book fell more solidly into portal fantasy than The Magicians did. Honestly, this is the book many of the people who hated the first book were looking for. There is another world, magical quests, and large scale peril. Through all of this Grossman retains is literary style, playing with genre tropes and existential questions. He fills in some lost information in events that took place off screen from the first book, and uses that to help the reader question what things that we do in our lives are worth. I'm looking forward to completing the trilogy and seeing the resolution of what has now been set up.