Hmm. I was not prepared for the…Twilightishness of it all. I mean, much much much better writing, and I'm going to read on to see how the series goes, I think, but…hmm.

This is where half-stars would come in handy. Certainly better than the first, but I'm still not wholly convinced of it. Committed to reading on through the last book, though, and judging it as a trilogy.

3.5 as a whole trilogy I guess. I'm left with a lot of questions that weren't fully answered, but it's a story steeped in nerdy interests — science, history, art, religion, fantasy — and I enjoyed it overall.

Definitely check content warnings, though. It gets very dark and somewhat more graphic in this third book.

Maybe 3.5 rounded up? This is a hard book to review. The author brings a whole lot of perspective to the topic and presentation, so it's definitely not a journalistic or word-scholarly approach. But it's an interesting and entertaining read.