Being faithful to the books also means that the story is more suited to younger people. There are plot holes (faithfully reconstructed from the books) that a chimera could fly through while the story and dialogue are not particularly nuanced. They do, however, manage to fix a couple of geographical errors regarding national landmarks that the books had made. In short, it's a solid coming-of-age story focused at a teenaged audience. My boys seemed to quite like it while Janelle and I enjoyed it too.