The Magicians - 'Mendings, Major and Minor' and 'Impractical Applications'

It's like Quidditch, but with a much lower budget.

It's alumni week at Brakebills, which means showing off for the visiting alumni in the hope of attracting a mentor.

The Dean persuades Alice to come back for a trial period, accompanying her aunt. Margo and Eliot compete to impress Aunty and try to persuade Alice to help them, but that's pretty minor potatoes. mostly what's going on this week is that Quentin's dad has cancer. This is a blow, despite - or perhaps because of - the absence of a close bond between the two. His father makes moves to repair their relationship through the symbolism of an Airfix kit that Quentin broke as a child, and encouraging him to quit school if finance is not for him.

"You killed cancer puppy?"

Quentin kicks ass in the Go-Quidditch tournament, with a little help from Alice, and Margo points out that this is because of the pain he is suffering. He decides to use that pain, and the power it gives, to cure his father, experimenting on the Physical cottage's mascot; a 150 year old immature Pomeranian called Cancer Puppy (because the enchantment keeps him young, not healthy.) Sadly, it does not end up well for Cancer Puppy, and the Dean explains that there are things that magic can't fix; the point is to know and to fix the things you can. Thus, Quentin goes to his father and uses magic in front of him to fix the plane, thus reassuring him that he is where he needs to be, and not wasting away studying finance.

Elsewhere, Julia is jonesing for her magic. She seduces Pete in order to learn of other sources, and is sent to the number two hedge witch safe house. Their resources are scanty, and she angrily blows them off, because she is a douche with entitlement issues. Pete offers to take her out of town, but she tells him she is still with fiance whatshisnuts, who promptly forgets who she is (because apparently all Hedge Witches are douchebags.)

"Well, this isn't good."

Penny finds a mentor, who claims to be the last traveler to have learned at Brakebills. His mentor recommends he get a special tattoo which will anchor his body and limit him to astral travel. While meditating, however, he follows a cry for help and projects into a dungeon where a girl has been chained by the Beast. The girl, Victoria, is one of the missing Third Year class and, despite the mentor's protestations, another traveler. Penny and Kady go to Alice and Quentin, who recognise a crest that Penny saw as indicating that he was in the supposedly fictional land of Fillory.

In 'Impractical Applications', Kady tattoos the anchor on Penny, who is in no mood to entertain Quentin's curiosity about Fillory. Shortly afterwards, the first years are rounded up by the older students to face a hazing ritual called the Trials.

"We don't get on."

Julia continues her quest to find the magic she believes she is owed (seriously, even as his increasing uncertainty makes Quentin more sympathetic, Julia gets more and more annoying.) She hooks up with an older Hedge Witch, Hannah, who also fell foul of Marina, and who turns out to be Kady's mother. Kady refuses to help them, and reveals that she is in hock to Marina because Hannah killed someone and Marina covered it up. Kady swipes the spell they were working on, but that provides a 'hook' when she gives it to Marina, allowing them to work a cooperative spell to snatch her files, cabinets and all.

"I'm a bloodsucking fiend! Look at my outfit."

Unfortunately, Marina is not out of tricks, swapping out the spells for blank paper and attaching a vicious little curse that melts Hannah's brain. Charming.

Back in the trials, Penny and Quentin bond a little as they work together to cheat off Alice (which is apparently an acceptable tactic,) and then all three of them and Kady - who can apparently come and go at liberty - work together to overcome a series of apparently nonsensical trials conducted in some bizarre, fairytale backwoods behind the campus. The main thing for them to learn is to work as a team; that and that the senior class are a bunch of fucking weirdos.

"Also, I am awesome."

Finally, the surviving students - almost literally; failure leads to being kicked from the school - have to pair off, get naked and admit their deepest, darkest secret. Seriously, this school has some pretty lax standards of pastoral care. Penny admits that he is falling in love with Kady, who in return admits... that she has been using him. Alice admits that she holds back for fear of being even more unpopular. Convinced he is failing, Quentin admits that Julia was right; he runs away, sabotaging himself even when he has what he always wanted.

And then they turn into geese. So... that happened.

The Magicians is definitely getting better as the series picks up pace, although the compressed timescale of the series means that everything at this school seems to happen very quickly. Also, Julia and Quentin appear to share a finite pool of likability, so that the more sympathetic one becomes, the more annoying the other is. This is potentially a problem. Also, what the frick is going on with Marina's outfits?