Any Way The Wind Blows (Book Review)

Any Way the Wind Blows is a charming and emotionally satisfying conclusion to Rainbow Rowell’s boldly atypical fantasy trilogy.

Rainbow Rowell is wonderful. Fangirl—technically the first novel which features Simon and Baz, although it is not really a part of the trilogy’s continuity—was the first novel with a heroine I truly related to, and I’ve been a huge Rowell fan ever since. I’ve always been more interested in fictional worlds than my own life, and that wasn’t something I had ever seen depicted in fiction before. Then came the Simon Snow trilogy, which is relatable in a very different way. I’ve written at length about the creativity of the first book in the series, Carry On, which reads like a parody of (or maybe an homage to) blockbuster fantasy series like Harry Potter. It acts as the final book in a longstanding series, referring to past events as though the reader has already experienced them and just needs an occasional reminder. It relies on the reader’s knowledge of common fantasy tropes—the orphaned Chosen One, the wise and powerful mentor, the beautiful but oft-kidnapped girlfriend, the privileged and potentially evil rival, the brainy sidekick, and so on—and uses them as building blocks. In Fangirl, the Simon Snow series is essentially an in-world version of Harry Potter, from its position as a worldwide phenomenon to the specifics of the characters and scenarios within its pages. It’s therefore easy to basically plot every character in Carry On onto a Harry Potter character from their the basic archetypes. Simon is Harry, Penny is Hermione, Baz is Draco Malfoy, the Mage is Dumbledore, Ebb is Hagrid, and so on (Agatha’s doesn’t necessarily have a direct comparison to that series, but her basic type is no less familiar: she starts off as any generic superhero’s girlfriend, like Spiderman’s Mary Jane or Superman’s Lois Lane). Carry On makes some surprising reversals and reveals, breaking the characters out of their base type, but it ends where you’d expect the last book of an epic series to end: the hero has vanquished his foe and saved the magical world, and he is now safely wrapped in the arms of his true love.

(Spoilers for Carry On and Wayward Son from here on out)

I loved Carry On, but I assumed that it was a one-off. Then came Wayward Son. The second book of the trilogy has a more traditional narrative structure, but it sets up the trajectory of the rest of the series. Carry On is an ending, and Wayward Son is about the aftermath of an ending. Simon Snow was groomed from childhood to save the world. He was defined by his powerful magic. Now he has saved the world from himself—after learning that his own magic was the great threat he was fighting—and he is no longer powerful. His mentor is dead, and Simon himself killed him, albeit unintentionally. Simon technically achieved what he was set to accomplish, but how do you go forward when everything you knew was a lie? His whole identity was being the Mage’s Heir and the Chosen One. Now he is neither of those things, and maybe he never was those things. Also, he’s barely twenty. He has a whole life to look forward to, but now he’s purposeless and depressed. Wayward Son asks us to consider the cost of being the Chosen One. It is about depression. It’s about having a lot of potential in youth but hitting a wall in adulthood (who else can relate?). It’s about how love doesn’t cure all. While the narrative itself is pretty standard, and the plot in some ways is also (Simon, Baz, and Penny have to save Agatha from vampires), the bigger implications aren’t standard for fantasy. It’s very internal. Simon has fallen into lethargy and self-hatred, and despite their best efforts Baz and Penny can’t do anything about it.

Even the vampires aren’t just a spooky supernatural threat; they’re a metaphor for Baz’s queerness and alienation. Baz being a vampire was initially a secret and then it’s kind of a running joke, and here it transforms into a major part of his identity. It’s both a source of pride and a source of shame. Baz’s gayness and his vampireness are constantly paralleled, and here both become something he owns and explores, and it’s worth noting that Baz’s self-assuredness comes far before Simon’s; even through Any Way the Wind Blows, Simon has not fully accepted either his sexuality or his wings.

And that brings us to Any Way the Wind Blows. (This has turned into a series review more than a single-book review, hasn’t it? Well, so be it. Final books are bigger than just a single book; they have to bring it all together). My first impression is that it is a gentler novel than either that came before it. While, yes, there are plot things going on—most specifically with Shepard, who is in my opinion the most fantasy-typical character in the series—the main story is not about undoing demon deals or unmasking a dangerous fraud. Any Way the Wind Blows is about Simon coming to terms with his lost power, learning who he really is, and finding a way to live for the present. Early on, Simon essentially abandons Penny and Baz because he finds it too painful to be around their magic, which reminds him too much of what he has lost. He begs them to stop casting spells on him, makes an appointment to have his wings and tail surgically removed, and makes unhappy plans to return to the Normal world where he feels he belongs.

(Spoilers this paragraph only). Like in Carry On, there is an apparent villain. Then we had the Humdrum, and now we have Smith. But in both cases, the antagonist is actually Simon. It was more literal in Carry On because for all intents and purposes Simon was the Humdrum. Here, Smith is a pipe dream. He represents everything that Simon thinks he wants. He offers Simon an out, because if Smith is the true Greatest Mage, then the weight of that responsibility is off Simon. If Smith can really return people’s magic, then Simon can be fixed and return to the life that he wants. But Smith’s promises are too good to be true. He has to be defeated, but defeating Smith the man is thematically secondary to overcoming what he represents. Simon can neither fully toss off the mantle of having been the Chosen One nor fully reenter the world of mages as the person he was before he met the Mage. He has been irrevocably changed by his experiences, and the only way forward is to accept who he is now. He has been literally transformed by his ordeals, and there is no going back from that.

A major part of this is his relationship with Baz. Simon knows he loves Baz, but he’s very confused beyond that. A lot of relationships in YA are idealized. Kisses are magical, and sex is beautifully life-changing. It’s often smooth sailing after the first kiss, but that’s charmingly not true of Simon and Baz. Baz isn’t immune from Simon’s worst depressive storms, and Simon is so low that he requires near-constant confirmation that Baz isn’t going to leave him. Despite having been together for some time, their relationship is at times awkward and tentative and overly needy, and because of that it feels messily real. It splits the difference between love conquers all and no one will love you if you don’t love yourself, and I really love that because ultimately their relationship is far from perfect, but it’s perfect for them (even if there are a few extremely cringey moments).

I do want to briefly mention the whole Simon-and-bisexuality thing. In both Carry On and Wayward Son, there’s a weird lack of bisexual visibility. Simon isn’t necessarily bi, but it’s very weird how that was never presented as an option for a character who had a long-term sexual relationship with a woman and now has one with a man and who has indicated that he is confused but still apparently attracted to women (see: Simon at the renaissance faire). In Any Way the Wind Blows, the idea is finally presented. Simon doesn’t know how he identifies, but he’s adamant that he’s not straight and gently rejects both “gay” and “bi” as labels before mostly dropping the subject by saying to Baz “I was with a girl for three years, and I still don’t know if I like girls! […] All I really know is that nothing I’ve experienced so far compares to you. Maybe that makes me gay. Or maybe that just makes me yours” (132). I don’t really mind that Simon never picks a label (some people don’t need one, and goodness knows I can relate to eternally questioning which not-straight label fits best); I’m just happy that Rowell finally acknowledged that bisexuality is an option for Simon (or, by extension, for Agatha). I would’ve been happier if Penny’s mother hadn’t inflated bisexuality with midlife crisis, but for the most part I’m happy.

Speaking of Agatha, I was surprised but delighted by Agatha’s storyline. I love Agatha. She could so easily have been a throwaway character, the unsupportive girlfriend that never really loved Simon and who Simon never really loved. There are a lot of unflattering roles she could have fulfilled, and it initially looked like she was going to: the annoying girlfriend who resents her boyfriend for saving the world, the girl who kept her boyfriend from realizing he was gay, the one who does nothing but shit on magic all the time, the unfriendly shrew who provides a contrast for the hero’s real friends, the girly girl who is the “other girl” sexist people are referring to when they say someone isn’t like other girls, etc. Instead, she’s just as developed and nuanced as anyone else. She’s actually an excellent foil for Simon, and she gently goes through a very similar arc. She considers leaving the world of magic but eventually finds her place in it. She moves on from the role everyone expected of her to find one that’s much more surprising but fulfills her more. She has a long-term heterosexual relationship that means basically nothing and finds an atypical queer partner who suits her. She saves the world… but she does it in a gentle, feminine way that goes largely unnoticed and unremarked upon. I write more about my male favorite characters because they’re usually much splashier (the funny, loyal, self-loathing sidekick who means well but makes terrible decisions), but I’m realizing that I have a type for female characters, too: the smart, confident girls whose strength is gentle and comes from femininity.*

*I hate toxic femininity, the kind that goes girls have to wear dresses and be passive and submissive and become wives and mothers, but I love it when people assert their girliness to combat the idea that strength only comes from traditionally masculine attributes like an affinity for violence or aggressive tomboyishness.

Penny is awesome, but I liked her storyline the least of the three. As I said above, I have nothing against Shepard, but he’s a pretty standard character. He sticks his nose into lots of places it doesn’t belong and incurs ridiculous consequences. I definitely enjoyed the consequences, and I love how badass Penny took the initiative and used her brilliance to save the day. In another novel, Penny and Shepard taking on his demon deal might have been my favorite part, but Simon, Baz, and Agatha are so fascinating that, great as she is, Penny is a still-bright lowlight of Any Way the Wind Blows. I do love it when the heroes smart themselves out of scrapes, though; it feels more earned than simply throwing a punch and hoping it lands.

I also really enjoyed the full-circle feeling. Even though the end of Any Way the Wind Blows feels like a beginning in many ways (if this series has proved anything, it’s that endings are not really endings), it nevertheless has a feeling of completeness. Simon, Baz, Penny, and Agatha might be looking down the road at new adventures, but the part of their story that the reader is privy to is over. The echoes to Carry On do that brilliantly. Revisiting Lucy and her family was a surprise, but calling back to her feels very appropriate.

What’s the verdict?

The whole Simon Snow trilogy is a must-read for fantasy lovers, particularly YA lovers. It brilliantly does double duty by telling an engaging surface-level story while also playing with tropes and shuffling characters enough that it feels like a treatise on fantasy. Reading it kept me on the edge of my seat for plot developments, smiling over the cutest and most romantic moments, and thinking deeply about the way fantasy as a genre is constructed. It does so much so well, and it makes it feel effortless. Happily, Any Way the Wind Blows is a worthy finale. It wraps up the most pressing storylines without losing the idea that the series was built on: the story never really ends, even after the reader has closed the last page.

What’s next?

Because Carry On has picked up a life outside of its origins, some people might not know that Simon and company originate from a story-within-a-story. Rainbow Rowell’s Fangirl is about a girl who has devoted much of her life to fangirling over a series of children’s books. Those books? The Simon Snow series. That Simon Snow series is clearly different from the one that exists in our world, but it’s still fun to read the excerpts from the “books” that we missed before Carry On.

The only book I’ve ever read that does a similar meta-take on YA fantasy is In Other Lands by Sarah Rees Brennan. It’s a lot like Carry On, although it is much sillier in tone. Instead of functioning as the last book in a series, it basically condenses a whole series into a single volume. If you loved Carry On, you will love In Other Lands. Full stop. It has equally strong characters, an equally lovable queer love story (with a canonically bisexual lead), a similarly deep emotional core, the same loving combination of loving fantasy while lambasting it at the same time, and even some surprise wings! It’s absolutely delightful.

If your favorite part of the Simon Snow trilogy is the vampire stuff, you might want to try C.C. Hunter’s Born at Midnight series, which is about a supernatural summer camp. The heroine’s best friend is a vampire. Twilight by Stephenie Meyer, of course, also features a vegetarian vampire. And the early books in Cassandra Clare’s Mortal Instruments feature a great vampire storyline with Simon (there are even rats involved, although not in the same way as in Simon Snow!).

If your favorite part of the Simon Snow trilogy was the Simon/Baz romance, there are a lot of great YA fantasy series with queer guys at the heart:

Maggie Stiefvater’s Dreamer Trilogy follows a depressed hero who finds himself unmoored after a relatively heroic series run (this one actually exists; it’s The Raven Cycle). It’s a great series, and protagonist Ronan is one of the most fascinating heroes I’ve come across, and his relationship with his boyfriend Adam is just as beautifully complicated as Baz and Simon’s.

Adam Silvera’s Infinity Cycle is also a great queer fantasy, as are T.J. Klune’s deeply wholesome The House in the Cerulean Sea, Aiden Thomas’ culturally rich Cemetery Boys, and Mackenzi Lee’s The Gentleman’s Guide to Vice and Virtue (and if you particularly liked the storyline about Baz and Simon’s oft-interrupted journey to physical intimacy, you might enjoy the corresponding novella The Gentleman’s Guide to Getting Lucky).

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