A sequel to Sufficiently Advanced Magic, On the Shoulders of Titans manages to significantly complicate the plot. The number of characters who may not be trustworthy or whose interests may lie in a direction other than that of their allies grows to very nearly equal the number of characters in the book. Thankfully, the “magic school” elements of the plot are reduced almost to insignificance; the main character barely attends class and spends only a limited amount of time on screen taking tests. Which probably explains why he isn’t doing so well in school, despite having powerful friends (met as a results of events in the first book) basically tutoring him.
There’s still a little bit of the annoying tendency to preach about gender and sexuality, and the main character doesn’t seem to know if he should be attracted to men (his friend Jin, who asked him to a dance and then betrayed him) or women (Cecily, the girl to whom he has been betrothed for years, but has mostly fallen out of contact with), and the one annoyingly genderless “they/them”.
That said, there’s a lot of other interesting stuff to keep you reading. There’s not going to be a lot of emotional depth or impact, despite the author’s hints at an abusive father and absent mother and post-traumatic stress disorder, but there will be intellectually interesting magic and challenges to overcome.
Consistently interesting, if not consistently entertaining.
