This book started off really slow and quite boring. I stuck with it because I know that sometimes fantasy books in a trilogy can take some time for the ball to get rolling. There definitely are similiarities to Tolkien, after all, this is high fantasy. One thing I found interesting was the similarities that dementors in Harry Potter have to the shade enemies in this book. After the world building was done, the book was good. If it wasn't for the slow bits at the beginning, it would be a 4. Really excellent ending and was hard to put down.