Books like Leven Thumps and the Gateway to Foo

Harry Potter envy. That about sums up this book to me. It felt too much like Obert Skye tried too hard to create something with the same witt and mass appeal that the Potter series has. It made me feel like he wrote the book, not because it came from him, but because he saw an opportunity to write in a genre that was enjoying successes. His book felt too one dimensional. All adults where bumbling idiots that would have lead humanity to death thousands of years ago for example. It would have helped to have even one adult who could be a friend and mentor to the character. Instead it felt like Skye tried to take the humor of the Durseleys and shove it at you with every authority figure in the book.It also just felt like everything in his magic was contrived, more like he just decided "oh this would be fun let's do that" with no throught for consistency etc. It perfectly demonstrated the points Sanderson writes about with magic. If your magic doesn't have defined rules and a system the reader can rely on, you cannot use it as a solution to major plot elements. If you do, it just feels like the author got lazy and said "I don't know how to solve this, so let's just have a magic spell save the day."