The more I think about this, the more I think it was closer to 2.5 stars. It's not a bad book, but it's far from a perfect book. First of all, it's way too long. It's 480 pages for no reason, and I couldn't even tell you what took so long. It's like the author took the title to heart and endeavored to make sure it really was one thing after another. Where most books have one, MAYBE two, things as its main event, there were at least 5 big things here. Some of it was necessary for setting up the final showdown but it also just felt really long.

Another difficulty I had with this is that, it is perhaps too British. As an American reader, I certainly don't expect british books to be "translated" in American english, but there was a lot here I didn't understand. I'd read a sentence, realize it made no sense to me, and then reread it and try to figure out what it meant in American english. It was more than trainers for sneakers, bonnet for (car)hood, etc. It was things like "I read around it" to mean "I read up on it". "I read around it" isn't something that Americans say and it's just different enough to make me pause and reread to figure out what the author could have meant.

Another writing style quirk I had an issue with was that the author doesn't seem to give a lot of orienting details. At one point, apparently four years had passed and I wouldn't have had any idea if the character hadn't mentioned it. Likewise, when the characters were going through training in the beginning of the book, I couldn't tell you whether the training was 3 weeks or 3 months.

For all the problems I had with this, it still held my interest and I've already started reading the second book. Some of my complaints are still there, but some of the new author issues that I think were present in this book, have gotten better.