In this case, the juicy bit is the antagonist -- the Sun King, avatar of the Summer of Love, now back and cranky at the world for screwing it all up. That's got some heft, as a premise. Everything else is same-old.
(Although, for some reason, the traditional first-chapter case stretches to a third of the book. Green couldn't work enough stuff into his A-plot? Maybe he should have been doing short stories all along.)