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Notes -
I think you can actually write off the first book. There is the stench of YA fiction about it for a long while although it is unfortunately a necessary slog to understand Catherine's character, how she views the world, how her mentor views the world, and the way the world has metafictional trappings of character and story that frame the setting (as well as portraying an expansive ensemble cast).
I initially also wrote it off because I thought the story was a generally predictable run where Catherine is being groomed to replace her mentor in his role as Effective, Competent Evil. The setting has metafictional rules that thumbs the scale to allow Good to triumph over evil; after looking at the historical record of the setting the Black Knight has decided he's done losing.
The moment I realized it had me was that this is not where it goes. Rather than lean fully into Effective Evil because Good is just so stupid, Catherine realizes that his path is also doomed, just in an entirely different way, and she has to navigate this mess as a rising third power in the world. But this was a while in, maybe four or five books, and I'm not sure if you had trouble sticking with it before then that this would be worth the trouble.
There's an additional element to it taken as a complete whole, it takes potshots to the quokka beliefs that smart people in charge will fix everything, that misunderstandings are the root of conflict, as well as the rationalist trap - that enemies are stupid.
It's not perfect and it's overlong/could use an edit like most works of web fiction, but it just ramps and ramps and ramps some more and when you think it can't possibly escalate any harder it keeps going. There are multiple conflicts later on where plans from five or six characters end up paying off at the same time only to domino all over each other and going to shit simultaneously.
Thanks!
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