This Is How We Fly: A book review

Yes, quidditch is a real sport! And it’s played by real people, and now also by fictional people in Anna Meriano’s new book, This Is How We Fly! This book review will be setting aside the friendships, romances, and family struggles that the characters undergo, and focus exclusively on what is and isn’t realistic about this book purely from a quidditch sports angle.

Anna is a quidditch player herself, so please don’t take this as me critiquing her work in any negative sense! I am sure she had to make some compromises with the way the community is set up to make the story flow better. I’m just here to let you know, if you read this book and get excited about playing quidditch yourself, here’s what to look forward to:

True to life #1: Recruitment

Ellen is invited to quidditch practice by a friend. She shows up with her friend at the park, gives it a try, and is promptly introduced to her body’s own limitations. This is absolutely true to life! Most people who play quidditch either saw it being played in a park or were invited by a friend. The structure of the practices Ellen describes are completely accurate, from the different personalities to the series of drills to the easy mistakes such as coming off broom that all newcomers make. All in all, this section of the book felt the most like a documentary for its accuracy.

Only in books #1: Club Teams

While there are a few community teams that are highly successful at recruiting players from the city population around them, including the Houston Cosmos, the most common type of new player is one who is currently on their college campus. Most college quidditch players get their start once they’ve settled into their college life, often just trying out the sport and riding the pine their first year unless they’re on a very small team pressed for numbers. Club teams mostly recruit college graduates, which makes them typically the most formidable teams there are.

True to life #2: Cross-town Play

Ellen, Melissa and her new friends play for the Houston team, and hold joint practices/scrimmages with their nearby League City quidditch peers. While not as common in the highly spread out Southwest (Texas-area) quidditch teams, quidditch teams often benefit from practicing with/against each other and regularly do so, especially when starting out. College teams with larger populations rarely do so, and highly competitive teams often protect their practices as state secrets, but the cross-town play is familiar and hearkens back to a slightly less competitive age of the sport. New teams that are still starting out should be welcomed anywhere!

Only in books #2: Poaching

The Katy team is Houston’s rival, partially for poaching away some of their better players, and few new players may be aware that USQ’s strict rules on team transfers actually came out of real life poaching situations just like this one! Most teams nowadays take a very dim view of poaching, though bad blood absolutely exists between teams that may share a potential population of players.

True to life #3: Steep learning curve

Ellen’s first scrimmages and tournaments are a blur of chaos, exhaustion, and pummeling at the hands of more experienced players. If anything, Anna may have undersold how chaotic the sport is for newcomers, even those who have played sports their whole life. The book clearly lays out the defined roles of the players (chasers score goals while beaters defend their teammates and the hoops) and Ellen plays a support role well on the field, just like in real life. She also focuses a lot on bludger control when there’s little else she can wrap her head around, just like a new quidditch player, and as she improves she begins to understand how to control the tempo of the game. All in all, it’s obvious to an experienced quidditch playing reader that the author herself plays beater and understands the game well.

Only in books #3: Instant star

Ellen plays quidditch for one transformative summer before [SPOILERS] at a major tournament in Austin. While not the starter, she is clearly an impact player and helps [MORE SPOILERS]. It’s a stretch to say that it’s impossible for this to happen but several things make this unlikely for people starting out now to have the same Cinderella story:

• Ellen reports that she hasn’t played many sports at all. Most people who dominate after a few months of quidditch play are already excellent athletes with an entire lifetime of playing as many different sports as are available to them.
• Since quidditch hasn’t existed for very long, there are few coaches and even fewer experienced non-playing coaches. Ellen’s own coach is one of the most common kind, a player-coach often taking up the job not for their coaching ability but simply by being a natural leader. To take a total sport novice to an impact player so quickly takes coaching that is rarely seen in the sport. As the saying goes, good athletes often make bad teachers, and Ellen’s rise is only possible with a very good teacher.
• In a multi-team tournament as big as the one held in Austin, many teams, especially club teams, tend to take up most of the oxygen. People who have been playing for years and years tend to hold a huge advantage over people who are newer, especially at the beater position where years of experience count for a lot.

All in all, Ellen’s rapid rise to impact player feels like the sort of thing that was more likely to happen earlier in the sport’s existence with a few strokes of luck, but now feels out of place with a surfeit of talented beaters with years of experience.

True to life #4: Tournament atmosphere

The quidditch tournaments that Ellen attends are spot-on. Casual, friendly, behind schedule, and with a burning hunger for food afterwards, these events are social events as much as sporting events. The lawn chairs with proud and slightly confused parents are also accurate, as are two-day events like many tournaments have been over the years (the trend is going now towards 1-day events more, but Regional and National tournaments are always 2-day events still). If you read the book yearning to be at a tournament like I did, that’s completely normal, and once COVID has passed, we will be again soon!

Only in books #4: No refereeing

Omitted from the book, probably to keep from scaring people away, is that teams must provide referee crews to assist with games when they are not playing. Even a new person like Ellen would find herself pressed into service as a timekeeper or scorekeeper, or even a goal judge, at every tournament. These are unglamorous, stressful jobs completed between grueling games, and so Anna did herself and all of us a service by leaving that part of the experience out. Good tournament directors will be sure not to have inexperienced helpers in positions where they can impact the outcome of a game, but even so, keeping score on a Texas summer afternoon can make anyone wish for a cool drink and some peace and quiet.

True to life #5: Texas Teams

Everything is bigger in Texas, including quidditch! Many national championship teams come from Texas. A few of the actual real-life quidditch teams mentioned in the book include:

• Texas Quidditch (UT Austin – has both intramural and traveling teams, as mentioned accurately)
• Texas A&M Quidditch (has two traveling teams as well)
• UTSA won its regional championship last year!

A Louisiana team is mentioned, which is fairly accurate as Louisiana was one of the original hotbeds of quidditch and still features three college teams, though sadly no currently active club teams during the school year.

Quidditch is somewhat on the decline, unfortunately, as NSULA, Oklahoma, and Arkansas used to have teams but no longer do. If you’re interested in starting a team, you have a ton of support right here on this website!

Only in books #5: Summer league structure

Probably the biggest inaccuracy of the book is the structure of the league. The events described in the book scan most closely to the USQ season, which runs from August to April, and a big quidditch tournament such as Texas State’s Diamond Cup or UTSA’s Alamo Cup would look very similar to the big tournament held in the book. In real life, those teams are done with their season in April and return home for the summer. Then in the summer, Major League Quidditch takes place, which is a high-level league with one team per major city (League City, Austin, San Antonio, Kansas City and New Orleans are the only MLQ teams in the South division). These constitute the best players from their area and no rookie would be an impact player at this stage of the game. These are also major events with spectators, game film, and high stakes: a trip to the Major League Quidditch Championship Tournament in August on the line.

Probably closer to the spirit of the games played in the book is the Texas Secede League, a beer league team with signups from each city, once-a-month gatherings for quidditch and drinking, and lots of boisterous fun. The TSL teams are not as highly regulated as the teams in the book, which sound more like USQ teams, and the stakes are generally lower. The TSL teams also have more unusual team names, colors and chants, though since it’s a summer league and there are new teams each year it doesn’t earn as much investment as the USQ teams.

Conclusion

All in all this is an excellent book with a lot of heart and a plethora of quidditch-accurate experiences! The things in the book that are less than perfectly accurate have been changed to help tell a more compelling story and there’s nothing wrong with that! I’m just here to help you be ready for what is and isn’t accurate to the book when you decide to join or start your own quidditch team. Good luck to you and I’ll see you on the pitch!

Alejandro Enriquez is a player, coach, manager and referee of the sport of quidditch, based in Victoria, TX.