It had main characters I really liked and could relate to, who weren't perfect but were competent and just plain good folks. The book was placed as science fiction, but if anyone who has read it attempts to put it in that category I will laugh in their faces. This one is definitely fantasy. On a cliffhanger. With no indication on the cover or on the verbiage inside the cover to indicate that it's part of a series.
Nothing is wrapped up in the first book or two.
More and more characters are brought in, with more and more subplots, until you get a whizbang ending in the last quarter of the third or fourth book to swing it all together. I'll probably have forgotten half the details of this one, and the sense of urgency to find out what happened next will certainly be gone. I'll remember the sense of annoyance at being gypped out of a complete tale far better than I'll remember all the plot twists and such. In short, I will not be a particularly motivated buyer. I may read the other books in the series some day, but I'm certainly not going to buy them in hardback, and I may not buy them in paperback.