A BOOK REVIEW

PRESENTED TO MR. ARCHIE ROQUETA

IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE SUBJECT:

READING AND WRITING

BY NEIL BRYANT BALIAO

 AUTHOR
Rainbow Rowell

Rainbow Rowell is an American author of both young adult and adult contemporary
novels. She was born on February 24, 1973 in Nebraska, USA. Currently, she is 45 years
old.

She worked as a columnist and ad copywriter at the Omaha World-Herald from

1995 to 2012. After leaving her former position as a columnist at the Omaha, Rowell
began working for an ad agency and writing what would become her first published novel,
Attachments, as a pastime. She stopped writing when she had a baby during this period
for 2 years.

Rowell announced in December 2014 that her fifth book, Carry On, would be
published in October 2015. It was published on October 6, 2015. Carry On is based on
the book series central to the plot of Fangirl. It acts as the eighth book in a fictional series
by Gemma T. Leslie about a boy magician named Simon Snow who attends a magician
school called Watford. In his eighth year at school, Simon struggles to come to terms with
his calling as the "Chosen One" meant to destroy the Insidious Humdrum, a magical evil
force that is destroying the magical world. He embarks on his quest with his best friend
Penelope and his girlfriend Agatha, all the while struggling with T. Basilton "Baz" Pitch,
his vampire nemesis and later boyfriend. Although it exists in a fantasy world and within
Fangirl was part of a series, the novel is a standalone book. It is heavily based on the
Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowling.
BACKGROUND INFORMATION

Rainbow Rowell’s new YA novel, Carry On, tells the story of a teen boy named Simon
Snow, now in his eighth and final year at Watford, a magical school hidden away in
Scotland. Simon had been an orphan living among “Normals” before “the Mage”
scooped him up. According to a prophecy, he is destined to fight “the insidious
Humdrum” and save the World of Mages. If this sounds familiar, obviously it is: Carry
On is a full-on, self-aware Harry Potter rip-off. Though Rowell’s magical world has a few
of its own conventions—some magicians use rings and belt buckles instead of wands;
there’s no Sorting Hat, but there is a Crucible that pairs roommates; spells are cast with
an emphasis on familiar-sounding phrases and language—most things map pretty
closely onto the Potterverse. But the achievement of Carry On is that, even with a
template more or less designed by someone else, Rowell has written a book that
conjures Rowling-esque magic just as effectively as J.K. Rowling herself—and yet still
feels like something new.

Simon Snow was originally an invention for Rowell’s previous YA novel, Fangirl, about a
college freshman named Cath who writes fan fiction about a character named Simon
Snow. Carry On doesn’t purport to be written by Cath, or by that book’s book-within-a-
book, also-made-up author, Gemma T. Leslie (a Rowling knock-off of sorts). It’s pitched
as a separate creation by Rowell, who writes of the novel on her website, “I wanted to
explore what I would do with this world and these characters.” So technically this book
is somewhere between Harry Potter fan fiction and Rainbow Rowell fan fiction written by
Rainbow Rowell. And in the end, it’s a testament to just how good—and even, in its own
way, original—fan fiction can be.

Fantasy might seem like a surprising genre for Rowell. Her breakout book, Eleanor &
Park, was a love story between teenagers in ’80s Nebraska, completely devoid of
wizards and elves. It seemed like it was part of a larger trend in YA toward realism,
inspired by the success of John Green’s novels. As A.J. Jacobs wrote in the New York
Times Book Review in 2013, “Of all the young adult genres—the Dystopian Hellscape,
the Human-Monster Romance, the Elite School-or-Camp for Nonmortals—the most
popular right now may be the quietest: Aspiring John Green.” And I admit that I put
Rowell in that column, which Jacobs called “GreenLit,” in my head, too.

But Fangirl should have been a clue that Rowell belongs in a column of her very own. It
had the realistic love story aspect to it, a cute college romance, yet it also contained
passages that were supposed to be excerpts from the “real” Simon Snow novels, along
with bits of Cath’s fan fiction. By writing about the world of fan fiction, Rowell was
showing her own fangirl bona fides. On Twitter, she recently raised money for charity by
classifying some of her characters into their would-be Harry Potter houses, and on
Tumblr, she posts about the fandoms she’s a part of like she’s “just another user.” She
even made Cath a writer of “slash” fiction, which is an insider term for fan fiction that
focuses on male-slash-male relationships. Just as many an enterprising fan fiction writer
has run with the idea that Harry Potter might have actually been in love with the evil
Draco Malfoy, Cath’s “fics” focused on the possibility that hero Simon Snow was meant
to be with his archnemesis, Baz.

The Simon/Baz scenes weren’t my favorite parts of Fangirl—they felt like a distraction
from the book’s central storyline—and when I saw Rowell speak at BookCon earlier this
year, she mentioned that some readers told her they skipped over them outright. So I
was a bit wary of how Rowell would transition from swoony teen romance to full-on
fantasy. But here, she is clever about the way an obsessive rivalry can feel not all that
different from an obsessive crush. Simon and Baz circle each other throughout the first
half of the book, each hyperaware of the other’s movements—“I can feel Snow’s eyes
on the back of my head,” Baz narrates, and in the next chapter, Simon thinks, “I already
feel like I need to know where he is at every moment.” This enemies-or-are-they
storyline this allows Rowell to play to her strengths, which means less magical
politicking and more vulnerable people falling in love.

Carry On, which is framed as the eighth book in the “Simon Snow series” even though
Rowell hasn’t written any of the other books, benefits a lot from being able to dive into
the action without getting too bogged down in all the castles, amulets, and mythical
creatures. The lack of context lightens everything in a way that feels perfectly suited for
YA. You’re able to see the characters in the moment, rather than burdened by years of
history. You skip the world-building and get right to the drama and emotion. And you’re
definitely able to just go with it when the story takes a turn for the slash.

In Fangirl, at one point Cath gets in trouble in her creative writing class for turning in fan
fiction. Her professor insists that it doesn’t count if she didn’t create the characters and
the world in the first place. But Carry On makes a case for fan fiction’s literary
legitimacy. It’s not easy to mimic, deconstruct, and remix the elements of a magical
world in the way Rowell has here.
Carry On by rowell Rainbow

Simon

Carry On, by Rainbow Rowell, is a fantasy novel which transports young adult readers to
the world of magic. In the story, the Chosen One (Simon Snow) must defeat the evil
Humdrum, who seeks to destroy the magical world in the United Kingdom. When the
novel begins, the orphaned Simon is just starting his eighth and final year at Watford
School of Magicks. The Mage, who is the head of the school and the leader of the magical
world, is mentoring Simon. As the Chosen One, Simon enjoys something of a celebrity
status. Some people hate and fear him. Others love him. Simon’s girlfriend, Agatha,
breaks up with him because of expectations placed on her to be by Simon’s side at all
times. The breakup devastates Simon. He takes comfort in his best friend Penelope, who
is beautiful and intelligent, and in the school goat herder, Ebb. Ebb is warm and friendly.

Simon also worries about the absence of his roommate, Baz, during the first few weeks
of the school year. Though roommates, Simon and Baz are staunch enemies. Simon
receives a message from a female ghost, urging him to find Nicodemus to find the ghost's
killer. Simon believes the ghost is meant for Baz, but Baz is not at school.

Initially, Simon believes that Baz is siding with the magical Old Families against the Mage,
because the Families have fallen out of power and influence with the Mage’s reforms.
They would rather bring the Mage down than save the magical United Kingdom. As it
turns out, Baz was late to school because he was kidnapped by troll-like numpties. Baz
admits early on that he hates Simon.

Upon learning about the ghost, Baz is deeply troubled, for his mother was killed by hired
vampires many years before when she was head of the school. Simon offers Baz help to
find his mother’s killer, and Baz accepts. Together, with Penelope and Agatha, the four
commit to solving the murder of Baz’s mother and to finding a way to stop the Humdrum.
Simon also comes to realize he has feelings for Baz, and the two fall in love.

As winter approaches, the four friends are able to determine a number of important things,
including that the Old Families have been right to oppose the Mage. First, they learn from
Nicodemus, who is the brother of Ebb, that he was approached by the Mage to strike a
deal to sneak vampires into the school to stage an attack to signal the need for reforms
and the coming to power of the Mage. Nicodemus explains he refused because he did
not want his sister to be hurt. The Mage managed to get vampires in the school. The
vampires killed Baz’s mother and turned Baz into a vampire. The ghost visiting Simon
was not Baz’s mother. Instead, it was Simon’s own mother, who conceived Simon with
the Mage in the attempt to force a prophecy and bring about the Chosen One.

Simon is sort of the Humdrum. Simon is a Normal child conceived with forced magical
abilities. He uses a tremendous amount of magic each time he practices, causing great
holes in the magical world to open up, and causing a shadow of himself to form as the
Humdrum. Only by feeding his magic into the Humdrum does Simon manage to defeat
the Humdrum, and kill the Mage. Simon, however, has lost all of his magical abilities, and
he must now live as a Normal. He is happy to at least have Baz and Penelope in his life.
Agatha, meanwhile, leaves for California to leave the world of magic behind for good.