The Magician King by Lev Grossman
So the Narnia/Fillory thing is unusual. That's a bigger thing than the Harry Potter thing. This one really similar to the Voyage of the Dawn Treader I think? But it's not like he "stole" the idea or something.

I liked this book. Favorite thing was Julia and friends attempting to summon a god. There was just the right amount of time spent on that whole endeavor and those people such that one really cared about the horror which happened, but not to the point that one was just pissed off at the author, such as how GR Martin, for example, kills people off.

This book was highly different from the previous book, which was very aimless. This was a more typical real adventure story, which Grossman, is right there with you throughout acknowledging such things.

Anti-climatic ending. But doesn't attempt and fail. Doesn't try to have a stupendous ending, doesn't fail like Steven King, for example, did with a number of his books. Just ends. And that's OK.

It seems this book gave me some idea. Which I've unfortunately lost before managing to write it down... Something to do with successfully being a person who writes.... I've had so many though, that one eventually figures they're all useless. Plus I'm just too busy lately. Studying for CNRN exam and so on.