This one is hard to rate, I think 3.5 is the sweet spot here. There are two major items that knock the 5 star rating down.

1) I felt the author was a bit caught up in his use of simile, got tired of "like" and "such as" instead of adequate direct descriptions.

2) This is not the end of the story. I knew there were 3 books but my thought was that this was one story, people liked it so the author wrote 2 more with same characters and story arc. NOPE! It's only 1/3 of the story (I assume)... The book ends with no conclusion, no results, just right in the middle of the action. You know how you feel when your favorite TV show ends with "To be continued...", and you get that awful feeling of "No! Why!"... That's how this felt.

Overall the series might get higher rating, but leaving with such a sour taste keeps me from rating any higher.