I'm a librarian who loves anime, manga, and reading a wide variety of genres.
I'm not going to write a full review for this, since I've already done that a couple times and don't have much new to say. Instead, here's this quick thing:
Just finished my most recent reread of this book. It's both one of my top favorite books in this series and one of my favorite books period. I consider it a comfort read, even though the "comfort" is a little muffled by the knowledge that the book's happy ending turns sour really quickly in the series' timeline. During this reread, I realized that I really connect with Taiki's feelings of self-doubt. I also found myself more angry at Gyoso than I was during past readings of this book.
(show spoiler)Taiki had some serious weaknesses, but I'd argue that Gyoso did too, even though they weren't as obvious.
What my reading dates look like for this book so far:
Lol. I haven't checked, but I suspect that 2015 might have been the year I reread my hardcover copy rather than this one, my paperback copy, so it's pretty much been a reread a year for a while. (As usual with these Tokyopop editions, I highly recommend reading the paperback versions if you can, because there are fewer errors. If I remember right, this is the book where they accidentally used the wrong pronouns for one of the kirin.)