The low star is entirely because of the ending. The book itself was good - it didn't have the focus of the first one, tended to meander around a bit, but I enjoyed all of the characters (even the one who started life as a villain) and didn't mind following them around in vaguely interconnected stories. ....and then it ended. With NONE of the plotlines resolved. Or rather, everything had a soft resolve, but nothing that was satisfying to the reader, nothing that actually wrapped up loose ends, just sort of gathered them into a bunch and dropped them. I turned past the last page and was literally "....what? The publisher forgot the rest of the book? The author got tired of writing it and just stopped? What just happened?"If you enjoyed Dragon and Shem and the other characters from the first book, and are open to meeting new ones, this isn't a terrible waste of time. Just be warned - the ending is nonexistant, and that's all there is.
