Well it just gets a second star, only because Part 4 (which is only online) was so damn good again.
But Sand Sea was just.. horrible - it has (as expected) again no real ending, but mostly the new introduced young main characters are just not ... loveable. I had not once moment, where I thought wow Li Cu is really nice, maybe a bit dumb, but its okay - lik with Wu Xie.
The whole book is weird - the chars are all not important at all, they are alle pretty stupid, they are all not loyal - which annoyed me even more. They called themself friends but pff.. nope - and yeah I do compare them to Wu Xie, Fatty and Pokerface. Then there are SO MANY parts where is something about piss or shit (wtf, rly? i don't care), or how annoyingly teenage they are, because it was like all three males NEVER EVER saw any female human ever and def. not naked - it was so annoying, holy shit, all those drooling males *rolls eyes*.
So yeah, I don't like the series either, but at least that was interesting.