Midway through this book I could not help but think about the Emperor's New Clothes. The consenus of my book group was that this book was incredibly lazy and written with contempt for the reader. I truly am a constant reader with sons, who probably has read more sci-fi and fantasy than most readers of this book (trust me, I am pretty good with LOTR, Star Trek, Star Wars, and most super heroes) and I could not get the full meaning of all of the references. (Oops, perhaps I should say the LOTR is Lord of the Rings, before I do the same thing.) My only conclusion is that our author did not care if we did.