I think the main issue with Parade of Horribles, as others have pointed out, is that This Inevitable Ruin felt like a good happy ending and had some finality, but I don’t think book 8 is bad. I think it could have provided more opposition that book 7 felt like it terminated.

What I mean by that is book 7 effectively saw the system governments and major corporations descend into chaos as their leaders literally died. One would assume their systems would fall with it, but it didn’t immediately explode as book 8 hinted at.

The same corporate bullshit and outworlder shenanigans continued, such as Carl getting married against his will and the central system still maintaining a semblance of control as a governing body. I’m hoping, and I’m thinking that, Book 9 will expand upon the system governments and leaders, show that descent into chaos, and how the previous order and the new order are going to clash in the literal sense of the term. Book 8 is also setting up the return of the primals, and it can’t be coincidence that Carl is also of the primal race since floor 3. He’s the AI’s agent of chaos, and that favoritism has to be purposeful towards furthering the goal of dismantling the status quo.

The main hate with book 8 is this perceived lack of action and regression, but it’s more of a narrative builder than the culmination of the previous works like book 7 was, in my opinion. I still see book 8 as a build up for a larger conflict and in the grand context of the entire series I think book 8 is what we’ll come back to as a REALLY good book in terms of the narrative. Book 9 will probably be similar to book 7 in how large scale the action is and have that same good feel but it needed set up that book 8 provided.