It's wild how this series started out worse than mediocre – because here, it's actually good. Maybe good-for-fanfic, but the upper end of that, at the very least. Characters come together, and act with intelligence (especially the villains, aswell). They have relationships that influence how they live and act in wider society. There's plotting and storytelling, and the writing is decent, too. Huge improvement over anything before, and especially over the first three books.

The story continues escalating with real stakes, real character development, and tons of accumulated background that is used well instead of ignored as in the og series. For example, in the very first installation, the series introduces life debts as serious and binding (within a limited context), and this book then sees the bad side working to exploit this mechanism. Characters are also still growing and feeling very vivid and real. Good work.

Best of the series so far. Ginny's perspective on possession and second year was well done, even as Gryffindor Draco continued to be weirdly written.

The series continues at its new fun-not-stupid fanfic levels, rather than the first volume of why-please-stop levels, so that's nice.

Slightly better than the first part, but not by much. The fanfic logic is still making my brain hurt. Please, god, why.

Logic is the author's enemy. Frustrating read, because there were some neat ideas in there. It's a longer series and I shudder to think how bad the plotting and characters will get when built on a basis this shaky.