When I first saw this it was billed as a "Harry Potter for the college crowd" and so I picked it up when I saw it. And I was seriously disappointed. It's written well enough, Grossman has a reasonable amount of skill. But for the first time in a while I just hated the actual story. 
 Grossman's characters are a bunch of whiny, self-involved Hipsters-in-training who repeatedly make me want to line them up neatly in order to whap them all upside the head with a board in an efficient way. The goal (of the few characters who actually have a goal beyond getting drunk and/or laid) is apparently to escape their world into a fictional one they obsess over- a thinly disguised version of C.S. Lewis' Narnia. 
 One saving grace of the book is a sequence where our moron-squad are transformed into geese for a long journey, and that sequence is magnificent, with a depth missing from the rest of the novel. I'd excerpt it here to save you the cost of getting the whole lousy book, but that'd probably break copyright law somehow. If not now, then it will next week. So unless you're a lawyer willing to protect me you're on your own. 
 The whole thing feels like either a bad attempt at "updating" Lewis' masterpiece, or at savaging it. I cant decide which. Either way the work fails with me on such a massive level I was surprised to find there's actually a sequel.