It turns out that he had actually been kidnapped by a gang of troll-like creatures called “numpties” who can be hired to do a variety of crimes. Simon assumes that this person is the killer.

Although Simon suspects that the ghost was actually hoping to reach Baz, he listens as the ghost asks Simon to find someone named Nicodemus. One night, Simon is visited by an unidentified woman’s ghost (a clear literary allusion to Hamlet’s father) and demands justice for her murder. Because Baz is descended from one of the Old Families (his mother was a former head of Watford), Simon suspects that Baz is absent because the Old Families have started to oppose the Mage and his reform agenda, which has deprived them of their longstanding power.

The two have always been unfriendly rivals at Watford, but it is unlike Baz to miss the first weeks of school without an explanation. Depressed, Simon spends much of his time hanging out with his best friend, Penelope.Īlthough he is focused on his breakup, Simon’s thoughts also turn to the mystery of his missing roommate, Baz. Simon’s growing popularity is too much for his girlfriend Agatha, who breaks up with him as the school year starts. For the orphaned Simon, Watford isn’t just a place to learn – it’s also his home and the place where he gets to be a celebrity. Simon is an extremely powerful magic user, but he is still not fully in control of this power – his magic sometimes has unpredictable effects. Simon’s destiny is to defeat the Humdrum, a being that is slowly eating away at the world’s magical power, creating “dead spots” where magic doesn’t exist. It is Simon Snow’s last year at Watford School of Magicks, where he has been groomed as the Chosen One by the Mage, the head of school and also the new leader of the magical world.

For example, the spells are actually song lyrics and proverbs. The novel’s tone is playful and often referential and metafictional. But Rowell is no less concerned with the minutiae of world-building than with the relationships of her characters, exploring these teenagers’ romances, friendships, and their connections with mentors. Carry On traces the adventures of a teenage magician widely believed to be the prophesied “Chosen One” whose powers will rid an alternate world Kingdom of a coming evil menace. In 2015, Rowell expanded on this novel-within-a-novel by writing Carry On: The Rise and Fall of Simon Snow, fleshing out the world and characters of her own affectionate tribute to Harry Potter. In Rainbow Rowell’s novel Fangirl, the title character, a college student named Cath, is deeply invested in a fictional series of novels about a boy wizard named Simon Snow.

Carry on rainbow