Goodness. Talk about conflicted feelings. I really wanted to love this book as much as so many others have, but I just couldn't. I'm very much an emotional reader and this book failed to incite any emotion in me until close to the end. It felt so mechanical in places, almost as if I was going through the motions and skimming just to get to a point where things would pick up. 
 BUT...and this is a big BUT here. I very much enjoyed the last 100 or so pages. The turning point for me was at (view spoiler)[the death of a dear character. (hide spoiler)] From that point on, the story finally snapped me out from wanting to prop my eyelids open with toothpicks. The cliffy ending didn't bother me because I have the rest of the trilogy loaded onto my ereader ready to go, whenever I should choose to read them. 
 Will I read the next two? Yes...I think I will. After all, the last few chapters were pretty good. I also hear that the second and third books are better than the first. Although, I might take a break for a while before diving into the second one.