I think this book benefits from having read the earlier books in the series with these characters. I assume my initial impression of "Why should I care about these characters?" is because I haven't read the earlier books yet, so I'm saying 4 stars (what it probably deserves, or higher) as opposed to 3 stars (how I felt) because I'm sure I'd have felt differently if I had read the books in proper order. As such, I'm not reviewing further until I read them in order and reread this one.