I thought it was better than the first book in the series. The story seemed tighter and there were fewer instances of characters failing to grasp the blindingly obvious. Still, it might be be time to get this series from the library rather than buy the books.
I didn't like the first book in this series but I thought I'd give it another try. Bad move. The only character I really wanted to read about was Ben and he's not around enough to do this to myself. It's not a bad series, it's just not my thing.