Reviews with content warning for Sexual assault - El bosque mágico

Please read my review of book one! It'll clarify some points I make here.

I would say all the same issues-- some slight improvements due to Quentin having worked on himself a bit. I was really looking forward to reading Julia's POV but the male gaze makes it hard and at times painful to read her.

The back and forth between julia in the past and quentin in the present is pretty cool, so I really enjoyed the structure. Lev Grossman's prose is honestly pretty solid and readable. I thought the challenging of the heroic cycle/heroism was sort of there, and the exploration of mental health was a lot stronger this time.

Julia's ending is intolerable and traumatic. As much as the show is criticized for how they handled julia's reynard/goddess arc... i think they did a pretty solid job fixing what was there in the books. I would not recommend this book for assault survivors or for people who are uncomfortable with rape scenes.

Content Warnings

ashlightgrayson's review against another edition

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dark mysterious reflective medium-paced

Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

Julia had the most amazing character development in this story and she is really what made this book outstanding. It is very clear that a if there is one thing that all of the magic users in this book have is ambition and their mental health issues. Magic can really screw you over and that seems to be the ongoing theme in this world. Quentin isn’t nearly as depressed as he was at the beginning of the first book and he’s become more self aware of his bad decisions, but his ambition keeps getting him transported into different worlds and into trouble. Julia is acting quite strange and no one really knows what happened to her in the time that everyone else was in Brakebills. We slowly find out more and more and her story ends up being both amazing and tragic. It also strongly reflects the loss Quentin had by the end of the first book. Furthermore, it reflects how Julia has grown as a person. I’m assuming we’ll be seeing Quentin grow more and learn from the consequences of his actions. I’m sure we haven’t seen the last of Julia either. I’m looking forward to it.

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