And barely a 3, actually. Settle down for another round of "Liz attempts to articulate why she was bothered by a book".
The story in this book, though a bit overcrowded with details and events and things, was definitely good. I enjoyed it as much as I could when the main character wasn't getting in the way.
Eona bothered me on two levels. Firstly, I hate the tempted-by-power, held-back-by-inner-goodness character arc even when its done. Secondly, it wasn't done well. I felt as though Eona continually recapitulated the same moral struggles, solved them and then did the exact same thing again. It was like watching a Disney sequel - she seemed to have no capacity to learn from her mistakes and so, by the fourth or so time it happened, I had no sympathy left for what was supposed to be a difficult moral struggle. At the same time, I didn't get the impression that Eona lacked self-awareness. In fact, she actually had too much self-awareness. Her ability to assess her own motivations far exceeded the ability of someone too short-sighted to change. Which is a long-winded way of saying that I didn't buy her as a person rather than as a somewhat flat stereotype of a Strong Female Character with a Moral Quandary (TM).
I also remained bothered by the same things that frustrated me in the first book - Goodman doesn't always manage to walk the fine line between homage and cultural appropriation and her treatment of disability. It's not...bad exactly. It's just...eh. Certain issues become convenient platforms for showcasing Eona's changing rather than allowing characters to exist as people (Chart, e.g.) and it was more noticeable in this book than the previous one.
I'm glad I finished it, certainly, and enjoyed finding out what happened. But it read to me like a first novel (or first series), one where the author has an overabundance of ideas and lacks the polished skills to pull them all off. Surprisingly (to me), it isn't.