I was hooked. So it's 5 stars :)
The characters, the events and the environment are detailed.
I loved that no magic or dragon was involved. It's a simple and approachable story of a handful of people.
It's true that there is a repetitiveness (the same pattern of success/failure happens over decades, but with different forms each time). And it's very suspicious the major events and innovations of the middle age happened to 5 or 6 people in the entire world :)
But that's also this directness and simplicity that makes the book so appealing. Bad guys stay bad, but do it with creativity! Some characters are deeper and more complex than others.
( )