I've just walked in after an evening show of 'Dark Knight Returns'...and the word that I used most for that movie is the one I am tempted to use for this book too.

Underwhelming.

The book is fine, really. All wizards, boggarts, witches, dragons, and the compulsory menacing (more comic than menacing here) villain DomDaniel. It's also a surprisingly fast and easy read, and technically, I enjoyed the process of reading the book.  But...then...meh.

Of course, I hadn't finished the book before I ordered the next two in the series. So I suppose they will arrive, and I shall read them willingly enough. But I wouldn't, for the life of me, recommend them to a first time fantasy reader, or even a second time one. Because mediocrity is perhaps a worse trait than being just bad.