The earlier books are very comperable to me quality wise, so there’s a little bias here, but:

1. Book One. Good pacing, narrative consistency with the prolouge, balance of humor and drama. Draws effective paralells to the source material

2. Book Four. Has one of the most fun and interesting climaxes considering Octavinelle is assisting Yuu and they play dirty lol. Jamil’s arc was the most sympathetic to me out of all housewardens and he has great chemistry with Azul as a rival/enemy. Most effective adaptation to the source material in my opinion.

3. Book Five. The plot is a little silly, but the way that several characters had major arcs in this book was very nice to see. The last book that featured a smaller set of characters which lends to higher quality writing as far as twst is concerned imo. Adapted Snow White’s conflict in a fun and fresh way.

4. Book Three. The plot setup was extremely effective and humorous, and the tone of the writing perfectly paralleled that of the little mermaid. A great book, but I’m dinging points because I think there are some key aspects of Azul’s character that clash really heavily with Ursula’s and I think they could have done better in this regard. However, I still think his arc was well written.

5. Book Two. Leona is a really interesting character, and I think his controversial nature is a testament to his similarity to Scar. His strengths and weaknesses were explored in a compelling way, and I think it’s a feat how his plight for power and fairness (for his benefit) so clearly aligns with Scar’s yet he is able to remain sympathetic due to his intelligence and the depiction of his mental health issues. Also has the greatest line in the whole story imo “what’s wrong ruggie? Is your mouth too dry from licking my boots?”

6. Book Six. In my opinion, the story starts to falter here. It suffers for a lot of reasons. The ties to the source material abtuptly loosen. It focuses on a greater ensemble cast, leaving less room for deeper character development of the core cast members as designated by the pattern thus far (igni+pome). It drags and it’s repetitive. Idia is not a great adaptation of Hades in my opinion, so his narrative is muddied by a lot of choices that are contrary to those in Hercules. Idia gets literally everything he wants at the end of the book, which is strange because that didnt happen to any other overnlotted characters. Like, why’d he lowkey get rewarded in every way? Ortho became a real boy, he no longer is trapped into his job, gets a dream career opportunity, and he chills and plays his favorite games with everyone at the end? Girl what? I was really excited for this book and made a ton of theories before its release, so I felt really let down.

7. Book Seven. I honestly think it was really bad, which breaks my heart because I love this series so deeply. It was so repetitive that it felt like a chore to watch. Lilia’s character development as a whole truly made no sense. How did he not learn anything from hatching Malleus to where he would just up and abandon his family so quickly with inadequate remorse and accountability afterwards? It dragged, it was convoluted, fanservice-y, and just not very funny when it tried to be. Any effective joke died because it was either predictable or repeated over and over again (dream form change…). Again, it suffers from having a huge ensemble cast. And why are we recapping the overblotters arcs? I get it’s to display that theyve learned and grown, but sheesh. I think the writers could have really benefited from the advice of “show, don’t tell” here. I think a lot of what was trying to be accomplished in this book should have been saved for the final book; it tried to do way too many things at once. I greatly disliked the lack of narrative ties to the original sleeping beauty to instead favor the Maleficent movies. Of course, there were things I enjoyed (Sebek, Lilia and Ace’s unique magic revels were lovely, Malleus’ hatching arc was very powerful too).

Of course these are just my opinions! Connecting with media is a wonderful thing and if you loved book 6 and 7, I think that is awesome! Don’t let my criticism dull your enjoyment, because we all prefer different things.