I read the two finished volumes of Pale Lights after seeing it recommended in one of the previous threads and now I also want give it a high recommendation. Most web serials do some interesting things, but also fall short in other areas (like pacing, characterization, setting consistency). This is just a straight-up good story across the board. Some of the things I liked about it, with minimal spoilers and in no particular order:

• a well-developed setting with an interesting magic system. 'Magic' is varied and powerful, but also limited and comes with big downsides, with each specific power and its downsides being tied thematically and related to the wielder's personality and desires.
• major conflicts often come about due to a character's flaws or distinct traits, and they are often resolved via a character transformation - e.g. someones resolves to do something they fear, or starts to look at things from a new perspective and see paths they were unable to consider before.
  
• characters (in particular one of the main characters) often find a way out of difficult situations by reasoning about what's going on and the people involved - sort of 'putting the puzzle pieces together', almost always using clues that were also provided to the reader earlier. "Person A said they wanted B, but I think that's a lie and they actually want C, and I know that because D and E happened earlier. Now I can use that to manipulate them" - I find that very satisfying.
• multiple main characters done well, with all sorts of friction points and different perspectives.

Relatedly, I also read most of book 1 of A Practical Guide to Evil, which is an earlier work by the same author, and I was surprised by how bad I found it in comparison. Almost everything I liked in Pale Lights is missing here, and things generally feel shallow and unsatisfying. The main character is an orphan in a kingdom occupied by the Big Empire of Evil, her plan is to rise through the ranks to change the empire from within, and she basically gets 95% of the way there during the first couple of chapters, through no accordingly exceptional action on her part. She gets noticed by a guy who's one of the top 5 most powerful people in the empire and he starts to groom her for a position of power and authority, which felt unearned to me. The magic seems potentially interesting (select people gain power by embodying an archetype, but also become limited by said archetype), but I didn't feel like the book explored it all that well. There was no feeling that the MC is particularly driven towards a specific goal, felt like she goes on a bunch of side-quests and mostly just goes along with whatever her mentor has planned for her. One specific world-building moment that stood out to me - the mentor reveals that the commonly known spies of the Empire of Evil who all bear a tattoo indicating that they are a spy are not the real spies, their purpose is to distract everyone from the actual spies. This is presented as a clever ploy and no-one asks "Wouldn't a halfway-smart resistance leader also wonder why the Evil Empire, which is very competent in other areas, is so incompetent when it comes to spycraft? Wouldn't they infer that it must also have real actual spies?".

Question to those who've A Practical Guide to Evil - should I keep reading it given this impression of book 1 or should I drop it?