
The Dwarves that built it had based it on Castle Blackspire, a design of Calypso's, which they thought was the most perfect design that they'd ever seen. The castle was first built after Ember and Umber flipped over a a distant, wild little world to create Fillory. Sometimes overly confusing, but overall very solid with an excellent finale.The information contained within should not be considered fully accurate and/or complete. Addendum: Just saw the last episode, so came back to say that this series held up throughout. But while I'm often discombobulated by these changes, I'm rarely displeased. Some story elements in the series are from the books, but they can come from any book in any order and are often mixed with things that aren't from the books at all. I feel that's a bit too obvious - the lack of destiny was one of those nice contrasts with Harry Potter - but it's fine. And while the books' Quentin did not have a Harry Potter-ish Destiny - he was just a smart guy so desperate for grand adventure that he would pursue all sorts of crazy things - comments made by supporting characters suggest that in the series, Quentin is in some way inherently Important. We follow Julia's story throughout the series, whereas her later reappearance in the book represented a plot twist. The first changes from the book were relatively small.

This approach means I often find the show full of weird left turns where it shows me something familiar and then wanders off somewhere else with it, but the show is very entertaining, and it's prickly characters (awkward guy geek, ridiculously hot, short-skirted girl geek, snarky macho guy, snarky gay guy, angsty magic reject) are, if not quite likable, still fairly relatable. That's not bad, and the world they have created works quite well, but it increasingly diverges from the books' mythology. The characters are all there and quite recognizable, and it's still about magic students and mysterious otherworlds, but it often feels like the series' writers cut the books into pieces, stirred those pieces in a bowl, then pulled them out and stitched the pieces together in random order, making up new stuff to fill in gaps. If you've read Lev Grossman's wonderful Magicians trilogy you may find watching this series rather disorienting.
