guessing that these reviews probably came from male readers.

LOL, I just posted the other day about why I didn't like Gladstone's Craft sequence #2, Two Serpents Rise, nearly as much as #1, Three Parts Dead (essentially: gender, subsection: tropes) and also gave an honorable mention to my sense, from somewhere around the midway point, that the rest of the book was inevitable (typical for noir, which both books play with, but 2SR follows more closely). And then three other people commented agreeing.

I went through the 'about' page on Google Books just now on my way to buy #3 and the first thing my eye fell on was a four-star review that starts off by saying how much better it is than the first one (huh?) and the second was another four-star review saying the end "twist" (so... someone was still surprised I guess!) was the best and elevated the rest.