This book was just okay for me. It took me a really long time to get into it. A book of this nature and length usually takes me 2-3 days to finish. This one took m a good 10+ days. For the 1st 2/3 of the book, I couldn't read more than 10 pages without falling asleep. That said, I can't really explain why. The story was pretty good (very original), and the book was very well written. The characters were well developed and there was a balanced mix of adventure, humor, and suspense. The last 1/3 of the book was great and I had a hard time putting it down. I think a lot of first books in a series are slow to start because of all of the background information the author has to give the reader, so I will probably go on to read the second one. I would recommend this book only to an avid reader, who particularly enjoys sci-fi and fantasy books, and would be willing to invest the time to read a book, knowing that it is the pre-cursor to what I expect will be a really great series.