Reading the reviews on this book I was a bit apprehensive about reading this. But I realized that the negative reviews came from people who had either read the authors previous books and have no creativity or youthfulness to be able to love change or they are just plain stupid. Seriously! I loved this story and not only the story but the main plot was brilliant! I found myself cheering for the characters in their endevours and feeling bad for them every time they failed. That's another thing! The way they made this fantasy story realistic was incredibly clever. Most times in YA they character fails once then has some sort of epiphany that helps them have success but in this the characters failed numerous times and up to the last pages it didn't seem like there was much hope of a happy ending. I loved this book and couldn't put it down. Read it.