Strong start, great world building, compelling mythology and then... man, does the pacing ever get weird. I was looking at how many pages were left and figured there would be a sequel, but instead the book wrapped up extremely abruptly. It's my biggest pet peeve in novels... take the same amount of time with your ending! It's just as important and the rest of the book. More so, in fact. It's the difference between me hugging the book when I finish it or going, "huh" before I put it down. This book gets a "huh."

Taro, as a character, was very uneven. I found his later choices very hard to reconcile with his earlier character development. I liked the messages about being your own person and sisters doing it for themselves, but those messages don't need to come through character assassination. It cheapens them.

So, yeah, 3 starts because the first 3/4 of the book was awesome.