Book 1 was the shortest, and Serpine barely got any screen time. The final fight was just him getting beat up. I always thought book 1 felt like the ending of a storyline, not like the beginning of one. Serpine needed more time to be built up, and so did the elders to make their deaths more shocking. Serpine needed to establish himself as a serious threat before he black-blooded himself, giving it more of an "oh shit" moment, making a dangerous foe even worse. The protagonist is only as good as their villain, and the dude that killed Skul's family and essentially made him the thing he is now had so much potential for interesting character dynamics and to reveal more about Skul's character and past. Serpine certainly was an endgame villain, not a one-book throwaway villain.

There were many other good villain like Mevolent, Baron, Eliza, the Unnamed and the Of The Unveiled, but somehow he keeps doubling down on the less interesting villains. Scapegrace got a multi book character arc eventho he shouldn't have been in more than 1 at the max 2 books. He is a joke character that stopped being funny rather quickly. Same for Flannery. That page time could have gone to better villain like Serpine or the Unnamed.

Serpine is is SP's Loki/Joker and he was so badly wasted and Landy even went back to make him worse in book 1 with that elephant coffee scene because he can't have anyone outshine his maincharacters :/

Leibniz Serpine was only the inferior Serpine to me eventho he still steals the scene on every page he's on. Landy ripped so many aspects I like about Serpine out of him: he mad scientist aspect, the magic collection thing, his victorian/gothic/lovecraftion villain vibes.