A funny, raucous tale of six freshman students starting their studies at a Wizarding University that has fallen on hard times. I particularly like the way that the novel captures academic politics and the feeling of stretching one’s wings in an exciting new environment (that isn’t always entirely friendly to one’s ambitions). Some of the students must deal with parents who don’t want them to be at the university (for a variety of reasons) and all of the students are dealing with family issues of various kinds, so there’s also a lot that I think our students will identify with in the exploration of family relationships. It’s light and fun, but not fluffy—there’s LOTS to talk about.
I just reread this recently and kept thinking how much fun it would be for the freshman students to read. I know that not everyone likes fantasy, but when I taught the first book in my childhood and the fantastic class, students who really really didn’t like fantasy thoroughly enjoyed it because it is at all a typical high fantasy (though it looks like it is from the cover). One of the things that would be fun to talk about, in fact, is the issue of genre and how Jones takes a great deal of pleasure in dismantling genre expectations. (more so in the first book, but also in this one).
(Submitted by Jackie Stallcup)
