It's hard to describe this book in a way that makes it sound at all appealing, because the characters are all obnoxious and almost nothing happens - and yet the characters are likeable and the story is engrossing.

Having watched the TV show I was surprised at how little happened. The show speeds things up and switches the order of events around and merges characters and changes who does what when and all sort of things and it results in a much more conventional story - and one season of very bad television followed by 2+ seasons of very good television.

But what the book does so well and the TV show does not at all is perfectly capture a sometimes nostalgic, sometimes idealised, sometimes brutal picture of what it's like to be 19. The magic is almost irrelevant. It's not about magicians, it's about young adults with no goals or responsibilities drinking too much and feeling sorry for themselves and generally wasting time. And it's fantastic.