Any Way the Wind Blows

Overview

Any Way the Wind Blows closes out Rainbow Rowell's Simon Snow trilogy, bringing Simon, Baz, Penelope, and Agatha back to England after the globe-trotting events of Wayward Son. The magic they once took for granted no longer feels stable, and neither does Simon's place within it. Having lost the power that defined him as the Chosen One, he has to work out whether he still belongs in the World of Mages at all — and what that uncertainty means for his relationship with Baz.

The other characters are carrying their own unfinished business. Baz is pulled between two separate family emergencies while privately sitting with disturbing new information about his vampirism, never quite finding the moment to say it out loud. Penelope has brought an ordinary American home with her to London and is stuck figuring out what to do with him now that he's there. Agatha, for her part, has simply run out of patience with the whole magical world and the people in it.

Rather than building toward another external threat, the novel gathers its characters at Watford and in their respective homes to sort through what's left unresolved between them. It functions less as an adventure than as a reckoning — a chance for each character to say the things they've been avoiding.

A Finale Built Around Endings

Rowell has described the trilogy as an extended response to the "Chosen One" narrative that structures so much fantasy for young readers — the orphaned boy, the prophecy, the destined battle with a dark power. Carry On examined that template, and Wayward Son complicated it by asking what happens to a hero once the prophecy is fulfilled and the adrenaline fades. Any Way the Wind Blows takes the logical next step: it asks what it looks like to actually stop being the Chosen One and become, simply, a person.

That shift gives the book a different texture than typical trilogy closers. Instead of raising the stakes, it lowers them, trading magical combat for conversations about grief, identity, and the slow work of rebuilding a sense of self after trauma. The emphasis on catharsis over spectacle has made the book resonate particularly with readers who followed Simon and Baz's relationship from its tense, antagonistic beginnings through to something more settled — and it has cemented the trilogy's reputation as an unusually introspective entry in YA fantasy.

Why Any Way the Wind Blows Has Been Challenged

The relationship between Simon and Baz, two young men who spend much of the trilogy as rivals before becoming partners, remains central to this final volume, which follows them through ordinary domestic moments as well as the series' larger emotional arc. For some challengers, the visibility of that relationship within a book marketed to teenagers is itself the issue; the objection tends to focus less on any single scene than on the premise that a same-sex relationship is treated as a normal, unremarkable part of the story rather than a subplot to be minimized.

Related concerns raised in some challenges point to the book's handling of identity and family dysfunction more broadly, including Baz's fraught relationship with his own household and the trilogy's willingness to let its characters question institutions — school, family, even the magical establishment — that are usually presented as trustworthy in genre fiction. Taken together, these objections reflect the same debate seen elsewhere in the trilogy's run: whether LGBTQ+ relationships belong in material aimed at young readers, and who gets to decide what counts as age-appropriate. In the catalog tracked here, Any Way the Wind Blows has been the subject of challenges in 2 states and 3 districts.