Simon is Harry, Penny is Hermione, Baz is Draco Malfoy, the Mage is Dumbledore, Ebb is Hagrid, and so on (Agatha’s doesn’t necessarily have a direct comparison to that series, but her basic type is no less familiar: she starts off as any generic superhero’s girlfriend, like Spiderman’s Mary Jane or Superman’s Lois Lane). It’s therefore easy to basically plot every character in Carry On onto a Harry Potter character from their the basic archetypes. In Fangirl, the Simon Snow series is essentially an in-world version of Harry Potter, from its position as a worldwide phenomenon to the specifics of the characters and scenarios within its pages. It relies on the reader’s knowledge of common fantasy tropes-the orphaned Chosen One, the wise and powerful mentor, the beautiful but oft-kidnapped girlfriend, the privileged and potentially evil rival, the brainy sidekick, and so on-and uses them as building blocks. It acts as the final book in a longstanding series, referring to past events as though the reader has already experienced them and just needs an occasional reminder. I’ve written at length about the creativity of the first book in the series, Carry On, which reads like a parody of (or maybe an homage to) blockbuster fantasy series like Harry Potter. Then came the Simon Snow trilogy, which is relatable in a very different way. I’ve always been more interested in fictional worlds than my own life, and that wasn’t something I had ever seen depicted in fiction before. Fangirl-technically the first novel which features Simon and Baz, although it is not really a part of the trilogy’s continuity-was the first novel with a heroine I truly related to, and I’ve been a huge Rowell fan ever since.

Any Way the Wind Blows is a charming and emotionally satisfying conclusion to Rainbow Rowell’s boldly atypical fantasy trilogy.

Any way the wind blows rainbow rowell