Weeks writes those drag-you-along-with-them epic stories. This book definitely relies the heaviest on it's preceding members, but it's still pretty fantastic in it's own right. 
 It does have an ending that's a bit too much like "The Fellowship of the Ring", in that it feels like a longer book cut in half, with all the good stuff about to start, which it is. Weeks usually begins and ends his middle books better. But I have no real complaint. 
 I love how the relationship between Kip and Tisis matures, given the awkwardness of their beginning.