It has a magic system that's all elegant simplicity and that forms a smooth, easy background for the main event of character dialogue and interaction. 'Carry On' is hands-down the best Harry Potter fan fiction I've ever read, and I've read some genuinely excellent fan fiction.Īs a stand-alone book separated from its context, Carry On is wildly fun, deliciously readable, immersive and compulsive as good fan fiction is.

With the help of his best friend, Penelope, his girlfriend, Agatha, and in spite of the machinations of his nemesis, Basilton Pitch, Simon usually carries the day - but in this final book, much of what has been taken for granted in Simon's life is unraveling, and he'll need all the help he can get.

That world is threatened by the Insidious Humdrum, a being that sucks up magic in a permanent and damaging way - and who looks exactly like Simon himself did at the age of 11, when his magical adventures began. In Carry On, Simon Snow is in his final year at Watford, an elite magical school, reflecting on the past seven years of adventures and political upheaval in the world of Mages. Carry On, while a completely stand-alone novel in its own right, is also the final book in the fictional Leslie's Harry Potter-like series. Leslie's final book sets the story in canonical stone. In Fangirl, Rainbow Rowell gave us a protagonist who writes fan fiction about a magical Chosen One named Simon Snow, struggling to conclude her very popular fan work before Gemma T. In the absence of that terminology, I'll say - not at all facetiously - that Carry On is hands-down the best Harry Potter fan fiction I've ever read, and I've read some genuinely excellent fan fiction (shout-out to GatewayGirl's Blood Magic!). Because in Carry On, Rainbow Rowell has written the book inside her other book, which was inspired by books outside her book, and it would be nice to have precise terminology to discuss such literary nesting dolls. In preparing for this review I found myself searching for the opposite of 'meta' - something that would mean below as well as above. Your purchase helps support NPR programming.

Close overlay Buy Featured Book Title Carry on Subtitle The Rise and Fall of Simon Snow Author Rainbow Rowell

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