Editors Reads Verdict
A love letter to chosen-one fantasy that transcends its meta-premise: Carry On began as a fan-fiction-within-a-novel in Fangirl, but it stands entirely alone as a moving story about misfits finding their place in a world that was never designed for them.
What We Loved
- The Simon-Baz relationship develops through genuine antagonism and earned emotional revelation
- Rowell's magic system — spells derived from common phrases — is original and often funny
- The novel works completely for readers who have never read Fangirl
- The queerness of the central romance is handled with warmth and matter-of-fact normality
Minor Drawbacks
- Readers who arrive via Fangirl bring prior expectations that the novel partially but not entirely satisfies
- The pacing in the final act accelerates sharply relative to the slow-burn build
- The Insidious Humdrum as a villain is more interesting conceptually than dramatically
Key Takeaways
- → The Chosen One narrative is most interesting when the chosen one is manifestly unsuited to the role
- → Magic derived from language grounds a fantasy world in how humans actually make meaning
- → The enemy-to-lovers arc requires genuine enmity — proximity and tension are not sufficient substitutes
- → Identity formation in institutions that don't account for you is a specific kind of loneliness
- → Fan fiction is a legitimate form of literary engagement, not a lesser one
| Author | Rainbow Rowell |
|---|---|
| Publisher | St. Martin's Griffin |
| Pages | 522 |
| Published | October 6, 2015 |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Fantasy, Young Adult, Romance, Coming of Age |
| Difficulty | Beginner |
| Best For | YA fantasy readers who enjoy magic-school settings and slow-burn romance, LGBTQ+ readers seeking fantasy with central queer relationships, and Rainbow Rowell fans curious about her genre fiction. |
Carry On Review
Carry On began its life as a novel within a novel. In Rainbow Rowell’s Fangirl, the protagonist Cath writes fan fiction about a fictional boy wizard named Simon Snow — and Rowell included excerpts from Cath’s fan fiction throughout that book. Carry On is, in a sense, Rowell writing the fan fiction herself: a full novel about Simon Snow, deliberately conversant with the chosen-one fantasy archetype the character was designed to affectionately parody.
What is remarkable about Carry On is that it transcends that meta-premise entirely. Readers who arrive without having read Fangirl — or without any awareness of the novel’s origin — encounter a fully realized, emotionally generous fantasy about belonging, identity, and a romance that develops through one of the genre’s better-executed enemies-to-lovers trajectories.
The Magic of Phrases
Rowell’s magic system is one of the novel’s most original elements. At Watford, magic is activated through common English phrases — the more culturally entrenched the phrase, the more powerful the spell. “What’s done is done” and “stay with me” carry force precisely because millions of people have meant them. The system is charming, often funny, and genuinely thematic: language as the carrier of collective human meaning becomes literal.
Simon and Baz
The heart of the novel is the relationship between Simon Snow — catastrophically powerful, perpetually confused, constitutionally unable to do things elegantly — and his roommate Tyrannus Basilton Pitch, a vampire from an aristocratic magical family who has hated Simon for years. Rowell earns the emotional resolution between them by spending the first half of the book in genuine antagonism and the second half in genuine vulnerability.
The queerness of their relationship is handled with the matter-of-fact warmth that characterizes Rowell’s best writing: it is not the novel’s subject but its medium.
Our rating: 4.4/5 — A love letter to fantasy that succeeds as both affectionate genre critique and genuinely moving story on its own terms.
Reading Guides
Frequently Asked Questions
What is "Carry On" about?
Simon Snow is the Chosen One at the Watford School of Magicks — and also the worst student in the school's history. His roommate and nemesis Baz is a vampire who has been missing all term. When Baz returns, the quest to defeat the Insidious Humdrum collides with feelings Simon has been trying to ignore. A deliberate and affectionate riff on the Harry Potter archetype.
Who should read "Carry On"?
YA fantasy readers who enjoy magic-school settings and slow-burn romance, LGBTQ+ readers seeking fantasy with central queer relationships, and Rainbow Rowell fans curious about her genre fiction.
What are the key takeaways from "Carry On"?
The Chosen One narrative is most interesting when the chosen one is manifestly unsuited to the role Magic derived from language grounds a fantasy world in how humans actually make meaning The enemy-to-lovers arc requires genuine enmity — proximity and tension are not sufficient substitutes Identity formation in institutions that don't account for you is a specific kind of loneliness Fan fiction is a legitimate form of literary engagement, not a lesser one
Is "Carry On" worth reading?
A love letter to chosen-one fantasy that transcends its meta-premise: Carry On began as a fan-fiction-within-a-novel in Fangirl, but it stands entirely alone as a moving story about misfits finding their place in a world that was never designed for them.
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