It's hard for me to say something about this book. I liked it less than the first in the series, but the set up for it did make it a much more tricky book to be good. As it is, I think it did it's job well. I wouldn't like it as a standalone though, it's thoroughly a second book, it follows up on what happened in the first book and sets up a problem for the third book, and that it does fairly well.