I've heard a lot of negative comments on this book, some say its boring, lame, an over-valuated trilogy, and so much more. 
 And because of that, I was a little scared of reading this, those comments made my hopes go low, and I really didn't expect to like this book. But surprisingly, I LOVED THIS BOOK. 
 The story is actually great, it has a lot of twists (trust me, you never see them coming) and it has all the magical elements all good fantasy story needs. 
 It has the typical and stupidly common "love triangle" (of course a YA novel, can't be a YA novel without one of those) (hmph...I think it can, but well...) 
 The world is build extremely well, and the characters are good. (I specially loved Genya, hope I see her in the coming books). 
 Now, the negative parts, You are literally thrown into a brand new world, with monsters, wars, powers, magical creatures, and some of those things are never truly explained (making you get lost some times. Sadly, it happened often to me during the beginning, making hard to get hooked up soon) But once you get to know all the stuff, and you make mental list of all the things, the book flows extremely rapid. 
 I don't think this is a masterpiece, but it deserves to be read. It's good and creative, so I'm definitely continuing the series *Goes to Amazon to buy the next book*.