In my usual complaint about second books in series, I remembered absolutely nothing whatsoever from the first book and, by halfway through this could, could just about tell you who I think was in the first one. 
The second half of this book was weird and interesting in its own right but the first part was hard to get through, mostly because the author and I have wildly different ideas of what someone is coming to the book with. And also because it so clearly felt like a setup. But the second half was so wildly interesting so an average of three.