YMMV / Alexandra Quick

• Alternative Character Interpretation: The Alexandra Quick series is full of these:
  • Alexandra Quick: Designated Hero, or Jerk with a Heart of Gold?
  • Abraham Thorn: Anti-Hero, or Anti-Villain?
    • Man who loves his children who is reluctantly forced to leave them to serve a higher cause, or schemer who uses and manipulates his children to further his ambitions?
  • Lillith Grimm: Abusive teacher who should be fired immediately, or Good Is Not Nice?
    • Also her relationship with Alexandra. Does she not really like her at all, protecting her only because she's a Replacement Goldfish for her sister? Or does she genuinely love her, and projects a cold facade because she's either emotionally damaged herself and doesn't know how to open up, doesn't want to interfere with her relationship with Claudia, or is afraid she'll be forced to expel her if she shows too much open liking for her?
  • Claudia Green and Archie Green: Abusive Parents, or Parents as People?
  • The Confederation: Do they want to catch Thorn to bring him to justice? or are they merely concerned that he'll threaten their powerbase?
  • Diana Grimm: Smug Snake, or Well-Intentioned Extremist?
    • Her attitude towards the confederation: My Country, Right or Wrong or My Country Is Always Right?
• Catharsis Factor: After five books, and centuries In-Universe, of the Confederation getting away with their crimes, ...and the Wizarding World has them starting to get some well deserved Karma Houdini Warranty with the prologue alone revealing that the broadcast about the Deathly Regiment was worldwide and every other magical government the world over is pissed and cutting all diplomatic ties with them. Then in chapter 4, Richard Raspire who has been nothing but a Smug Snake Jerkass while acting as Huckinson's Dragon gets a Karmic Death in the form of multiple bullets to the chest at the hands of Claudia, the woman he made sterile for being a Squib.
• Creepy Awesome: The Nemesis spirit is straight up Nightmare Fuel, but on some level you have to admire its dedication.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Constance, Forbearance, and Innocence Pritchard!!!
  • Honey the Foul-Mouthed Ferret and Charlie the Smartass Raven are quite popular as well.
• Foe Yay Shipping: Larry/Alexandra is one of the more consistently popular pairing in the author's shipping polls, though it's usually second to Alex/Anna and since the Stars Above it has been relegated to third place after Alex/Brian.
• Fridge Horror:
  • The Deathly Regiment are the souls of children who were sacrificed as part of a deal between the Confederacy and the Generous Ones. Thing is, the Generous Ones never asked for children to be sacrificed to them. The Confederacy offered. Given that the Generous Ones had no problem with Darla and Innocence being sacrifices, they evidently don't care who gets sacrificed, even if (as in Darla's case), the sacrifice is too old to qualify under the old rules (which said that the sacrifice must be too young to wield a wand).
  • In Deathly Regiment, Alexandra realises that Anna's father intentionally married a Muggle because only pureblood children are eligible to be sacrificed, and a half-blood obviously wouldn't count. World Away reveals that the Confederacy sacrifice a child every day, but mostly use Muggles, though apparently a certain number need to be magical. If they'd really wanted, they could have sacrificed Anna at any time.
    • To make matters worse, one of the children who went missing wasn't included in the list of sacrifices. The Confederation might be doing something even worse.
  • At the end of Stars Above, it's revealed that Nigel is a highly venomous Australian snake. And Alexandra had no idea. Let that sink in.
  • In Stars Above, the fact that magical families were subtly making their Squib children "disappear" is bad enough, but they were also doing it to children they suspected of being Squibs.
• Genius Bonus: People with sufficient knowledge of classical mythology were able to deduce the existence of a third Grimm sister early in book 2 from the revelation of Diana Grimm's middle name.
• Growing the Beard: The first book mirrors the plot of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone fairly closely and in many places seems more like a deconstructive retread than a story of it's own. The second book is where many of the more interesting and morally ambiguous characters are introduced or come into their own (Darla, Diana Grimm, Maximillian, Abraham Thorn) and the series develops a mythology and overarching plot of it's own while introducing many of the story elements that separate Alexandra Quick from Harry Potter (e.g. Dueling, Magical Experimentation, Long quest sequences away from school).
• Heartwarming Moment: The dedication on a book given to Alexandra by the author, a ghost: "For Maximilian and those who remember him. Death only wins when you have been forgotten."
• Ho Yay: Alex and Anna have pretty massive amounts of subtext, topped up with a full blown Anguished Declaration of Love from Anna.The ship also consistently wins the shipping polls. As of Chapter 23 of World Away it's now canon, on Anna's part at least.
• Iron Woobie: Tomo Matsuzaka. She's the only one from her culture at the school and is being abused and viciously bullied by much older students out of racism, but her only response is to stick it out and fight back.
• Jerkass Woobie: ALEX. Sure she's a total bitch, but let's recap shall we...
  • She's been shunned and bullied her entire life.
  • She's had a distant relationship with her parents who as it turns out, aren't really her parents at all.
  • She is constantly lied to and belittled by the adults in her life.
  • The only friend she ever had turned his back on her and outright mocked her in front of the aforementioned bullies
  • She had to watch her own brother sacrifice himself to save her.
  • She tried to bring her brother back to life, but instead ended up alienating her sister, causing the death of one of her peers, and dooming herself to die in seven years.
  • She tried to comfort the sister of the girl whose death she caused, but was chewed out for it by possibly the only teacher whose opinion she actually cares about.
  • She tried to face John Manuelito and the Nemesis Spirit alone in order to keep her friends out of danger but ended up making things much much worse and being expelled for it.
  • Oh, not to mention she has incredibly low self worth, and after everything she's been through, she is still mocked and shunned by her peers. GOOD LORD!! Would someone give this girl a HUG!!

• Moral Event Horizon:
  • The Confederation is a bunch of Jerkass Smug Snakes from the very beginning, but when it's revealed that they sacrifice a child every 7 years in order to stay in power, they permanently establish themselves as the series' villains.
  • There is a substantial minority of readers who think that Lilith Grimm's behavior in book 1 permanently disqualifies her from ever being sympathetic.
  • Many viewers felt that Abraham Thorn crossed the line when he crashed a muggle train and caused the deaths of dozens of innocent people.
  • It's easy to sympathise with Darla wanting to prevent the death of her sister, but when she shows that she's willing to kill a child and her own familliar to achieve this end, she goes right of the slippery slope.
    • Heavy YMMV on this one. Most readers still consider Darla a sympathetic character.
  • Elias Hucksteen's personal horizon came when it was revealed that he ordered a teenage Claudia Quick to be forcibly sterilized.
  • John Manuelito sadistically torturing Alexandra.
• Nightmare Fuel:
  • The Deathly Regiment. Every seven years, a pureblooded child who is too young to own a wand is chosen by a secret lottery and sent into the Lands Beyond as a sacrifice.
  • That. Fucking. Nemesis Spirit!
  • The reveal at the end of World Away: The Confederacy haven't just been sacrificing a pure-blood child every seven years, they're abducting Muggle children and sacrificing them as well- at the rate of one every day.
• Tear Jerker:
  • Hecate Grimm. Left with permanent retrograde and anterograde amnesia, she now lives as Galen, Dean Grimm's cat, because she can't survive as a human.
  • Before that we have Max's death.
• Too Bleak, Stopped Caring: One of the reasons that Thorn Circle is the least popular book in the series. Pre- Character Development Alex is essentially a Chaotic Stupid brat with few qualms about lying or manipulating others and no capacity to consider the consequences of her actions. She is opposed by Dean Grimm, who in the first book is a Sadist Teacher who just barely loses out to Dolores Umbridge in terms of overall sociopathy, literally torturing her students physically and emotionally, up to and including beating Alex with a Staff of Striking, threatening to have her friends whipped, and threatening to obliviate her family so that they lose all memory of her. She shows barely a hint of remorse through all of this and it is quite clear both that she enjoys emotionally breaking Alex and that she is only slightly less evil towards other students. Meanwhile Charmbridge is a Crapsaccharine World that seems to embody all of the worst aspects of American private school system, and the major theme of the book (aside from the murder mystery) is the myriad ways in which institutionalized inequality and widespread bigotry conspire to make life at school a living hell for Alex and her friends. All of this is very well-written and even believable, but many first-time readers fully expect the story to end with a Murder-Suicide by half-way through the first book.
• Unexpected Character: Many fans were pleasantly surprised when the prologue for ...and the Wizarding War featured none other than Hermione Granger and Millicent Bulstrode acting as a diplomatic delegation on behalf of the Ministries of Magic from across the globe.

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