I was so ready to give this book two stars, at points even one. It was so tedious to read initially. 174 pages should be a 3-4 hour read, not a week and a half. The main character is just so abhorrent through 90% of the book and it's hard to read a book when you hate the main character. But this is not my first time reading a Shan book where I dislike the main character (The Thin Executioner), but Darren Shan is my favorite author so I pushed through and was rewarded as I usually am. The phrase 'I should have seen that coming, but somehow missed it' is perfect for this book. And looking back he does tell us early on and somehow I still missed it, good trickery and the drawings certainly helped. Will read the next one.