If you will, for just one second, look at your life and see how perfect it is. Stop looking for the next secret door that is going to lead you to your real life. Stop waiting. This is it: there's nothing else. It's here, and you'd better decide to enjoy it or you're going to be miserable wherever you go, for the rest of your life, forever." 
 "You can't just decide to be happy." 
 "No, you can't. But you can sure as hell decide to be miserable. Is that what you want? Do you want to be the asshole who went to Fillory and was miserable there? Even in Fillory? Because that's who you are right now." 
 Brakebills is like Harry Potter for assholes, and to that, I say bravo because that's a fucking fantastic thing. Yes, Harry Potter was a pretty dark series by its end, but it started as a children's tale. The characters are admirable. Brave. Courageous. They are imperfect, but they're often models, paragons. Real life isn't like that. Real people are jerks, and, let's admit it, we'll do anything to get ahead. We lie. We cheat. We steal. This is the American dream, and this is what the (American) characters in this book represent. The main character in this book is a depressed, over-analytical little shit and that's just fine, because I'm a glass-half-empty kind of person, and he resonates with me. 
 Are the main characters in this book nice people? Fuck no. Maybe that's why I like them. I'm an asshole. Let me clarify that. I'm not deliberately mean. I am not a jerk, but "asshole" to me, means you do what it takes to get ahead in life. It's all good to be meek, to be gentle. It's fine, but it's not going to get you anywhere in life. Studies have shown that leaders are, in fact, people who are jerks. Sure, you can be charming, charismatic, but everyone needs a little assholery in their life, however well-concealed. 
 If you're content with normalcy and a quiet, calm life without stress? Great! Good for you. I admire you, and I say that with neither condescension nor sarcasm. But a nice, quiet life where one doesn't want to get ahead, where one doesn't feel the need to stand up for one's self is not for everyone. It's not for me. I need stress in my life. I need power. And that, my friend, is why I like the characters in this book. They're assholes, they're not perfect, they're stupid at times, they're more Slytherin than Gryffindor, and they're the symbol of 'Murica, y'all. This ain't your British boarding school. 
 The main character in this book is a brilliant kid who stumbles (literally) into the Magical school of Brakebills. There is no magical legacy here. There are no magical families. Brakebills is effort only, talent only. Either you got magical powers or you're just a Muggle. Quentin passes the magical test (not ever having known that such a magical world existed), and is admitted into the school. Harry Potter jumped at the thought of entry into Hogwarts. Quentin: not so much. 
 Suppose it really was a school for magic. Was it any good? What if he'd stumbled into some third-tier magic college by accident? He had to think practically. He didn't want to be committing himself to some community college of sorcery when he could have Magic Harvard or whatever. 
 Skepticism! Yeah! 
 The characters in this book do not come from all walks of life. They're the best of the best. The creme de la creme. Throw them all together and you've got the equivalent of a bunch of pre-med studenst killing each other to get 0.1% higher in class. Quentin is fucking brilliant, the best in his school in the normal world. It's not going to matter here. 
 "Are you smart?" 
 There was no non-embarrassing answer to this. 
 "I guess." 
 "Don't worry about it, everybody here is. If they even brought you in for the Exam you were the smartest person in your school, teachers included. Everyone here was the cleverest little monkey in his or her particular tree. Except now we're all in one tree together. It can be a shock. Not enough coconuts to go round. You'll be dealing with your equals for the first time in your life, and your betters. You won't like it. 
 There's no Harry and Ron and Hermione here. There is friendship, yes, but there's always a spirit of competition here, because they're all the best striving to be the best among the best. 
 They were quiet and intense, always eyeing each other assessingly, as if they were trying to figure out who--if it came right down to it--would take out who in an intellectual death match. They didn't congregate overmuch--they were always civil but rarely warm. They were used to competing and used to winning. In other words, they were like Quentin, and Quentin wasn't used to being around people like himself. 
 There's not much playing, a lot of studying. Friendship does not come easily. Harry met Ron and bonded on the Hogwarts Express. It's a much bumpier road to friendship here. 
 "Listen to me carefully," Fogg was saying. "Most people are blind to magic. They move through a blank and empty world. They're bored with their lives, and there's nothing they can do about it. They're eaten alive by longing, and they're dead before they die. 
 "But you live in the magical world, and it's a great gift. And if you want to get killed here, you'll find plenty of opportunities without killing each other." 
 The magical system in ths book is mechanical, methodical. There are no muttered phrases, no cute names for spells. Instead of a visible villain like Voldemort, the evil, the terror in this book are much less visible, but by no means less effective. I've rarely read a phrase in a book that has more accurately described a feeling of a panic attack. 
 There was something odd about the man's appearance--Quentin couldn't seem to make out his face. For a second he couldn't figure out why, and then he realized it was because there was a small leafy branch in front of it that partially obscured his features. The branch came from nowhere. It was attached to nothing. It just hung there in front of the man's face. 
 Then Professor March stopped speaking and froze in place. 
 Alice had stopped, too. The room was silent. A chair creaked. Quentin couldn't move either. There was nothing restraining him, but the line between his brain and his body had been cut. 
 He circled Professor March. There was something strange about the way he moved, something too fluid about his gait. When he walked into the light, Quentin saw that he wasn't quite human, or if he had been once he wasn't anymore. Below the cuffs of his white shirt his hands had three or four too many fingers. 
 Fifteen minutes crawled by, then half an hour. Quentin couldn't turn his head, and the man moved in and out of his field of view. He puttered with Professor March's equipment. He toured the auditorium. He took out a knife and pared his fingernails. Objects stirred and shifted restlessly in place whenever he walked too near them. He picked up an iron rod from March's demonstration table and bent it like a piece of licorice. 
 Quentin's fear came and went and came back in huge sweating rushes, crashing waves. He was sure something very bad was happening, it just wasn't clear yet exactly what. 
 I know there are a lot of people who hated this book. 3.6 is a pretty crap rating for a book of this popularity, but I loved it, and here's why. The main character is smart, he wants to get ahead, he is pessimistic, he is a skeptic. Why is this a bad thing? What's wong with looking at everything through 
 The world is not all rainbows and roses. We need people who see the glass as half-empty. Fantasy is great, I absolutely love Harry Potter, but there's always too much of a good thing. Main characters do not always have to be admirable. Anti-heroes are awesome, too. Selfishness, narcissism, misanthropy: these are not necessarily negative traits because they make a character human. Are you perfect? I know I'm not. I know I have my dark moments. I know that I hate people 97% of the time because humans are dumb. It's not wrong to want to get ahead in life. It's not wrong to want to be the best. 
 The world is not a magical place. It is filled with corruption and people who will step on you if given the chance. Survival of the fittest means you have to be a jerk at times; you have to stand up for yourself. 
 That is why I like this book. It is dark, it is pessimistic, it views fantasy and magic in a more methodical, more sensible manner. It is realistic. If you want your rainbows and magical lions that talk, go back to Narnia. I'll take my Brakebills.