So Holden Caulfield and Harry Potter have this kid named Quentin Coldwater...

I really liked the idea of how the intricacies of being a Magician would work out in reality. The psychological and social impact on the individual would be seismic; the God complex unbearable. And Lev Grossman touches on these ideas in the book.

I like the idea of the obligatory mystical, everything-will-be-okay sense most tales like these utilize being abolished from the Harry Potter (HP) storyline and having the characters really FREAK OUT with power. That happens in the book too.

I like the idea that instead of HP being a living legend, his back story overcasting any other character or events in the chapter, we have Quentin who could have easily been an extra in the HP tales. He is an everyday person in a world where everyone has powers. He fights with his girlfriend. He wonders what to do with his life. He experiments with drugs.

Because of these touches, I enjoyed the first half of the novel. I didn't find it boring to read about the initiations of a foundling wizard again after 7 Hogwarts installments. I appreciated Grossman's direct comparisons to Hogwarts - he knew he hadn't invented the world; he just wanted to exercise the HP character in the next logical phase of his life - college.

Unfortunately, when the story goes to a magical land it falls flat. Grossman could have gone all Watchmen on his story line and given the characters an actual enemy; terrorists, global meltdowns, rogue classmates. Instead, the enemy is this abstract character the reader knows nothing about until the last chapter. And even then the villain's motives are questionable.

**SPOILERS AHEAD**

The author uses very predictable outcomes to tie up lose plots at the end of the fairy land story. The events in the unimaginative Fillory are pedestrian at best; a sea nymph who turns the teenagers on (the Odyssey), a walking tree (Lord of the Rings, of course), inanimate objects brandishing oversize clocks a la Flava Flav (Phantom Tollbooth). I would like to point out that I do not read fantasy novels generally and even I thought the Fillorian world was tired. All the time I was reading it, I was reassuring myself that Fillory had its own uniquely magical characteristics. It didn't. It existed purely for Quentin and Martin's egos.

Characters entered and exited the storyline out of nowhere (Richard, James, the girlfriend in the beginning whose name I forget). They didn't seem to have any function whatsoever and their characterizations were barely touched upon. Richard just suddenly appears and sticks around for most of the book despite anyone really liking him much(poor writing). He seems to just act as the story line's cynic until he takes a stand in Fillory to which no one even pays attention. There's a throw away sentence where he saves Quentin but then immediately ditches all of them without even a word of dialogue.

The friend that is a girl, after 300 pages of barely being mentioned and having no other role in the story than "the friend Q had to sacrifice in order to become a magician" comes back with Quentin's friends to save him from corporate purposelessness. No explanation of how the friends met up with Julia (that's her name, Julia. Not that it matters). No real tension in the story other than between Q and Alice.
All I can come up with to explain it is Grossman is/was planning to write a sequel. Because its either that or very bad writing.

James' only function was to be an obstacle in the potential relationship of Q and Julia. What's the point? Where's the editor on these issues? Terrible.

What I couldn't figure out was why Grossman didn't choose to make Alice the heroine? She had that brother back story, that really didn't fit in this plot crescendo. She was quiet, but strong, unless her strength showed her boyfriend up. Why did she only follow Q to protect him? Why didn't she ditch her bland boyfriend and friends and writhe in her own angst somewhere else and then fall in love with the Neville Longbottom? That's what should have happened.