I get why people don't like it but here are my take aways.

1.) It subverts the heros journey.

2.) The character has to stay in places for long amounts of time to work to move to the next point and that things were not given or explained to him

3.) Even though overall the message is "the real journey are the freinds you meet along the way" he still gets what he was promised and at least he actually went back to the tribe instead of staying back in Spain.

Overall I do think this was meant to be a YA novella and a literary fiction starter book just because there is not a ton of tropes overall.

As far as the writing structure it reads a lot like an epic though it clearly isn't.