The magic is gone. I know I'm supposed to be oohing and ahhing over hualian and the fresh examples of the pervasive corruption in the world, but all I can see is a bunch of elaborate magic tricks attempting to disguise the fact that the overarching story is about four times longer than it needs to be. It doesn't help that each book cuts off pretty much in the middle of a scene, so I spend the first chapter of the next book scrambling to remember what the hell is going on and who some of these people are, but I feel like even finding some way to fix that when we're halfway through the series wouldn't address the underlying problem.

Also, Xie Lian's method of "tricking" Ling Wen into revealing her guilt was absolute nonsense. Spouting whatever comes to mind until the other party surrenders just to shut them up and just telling the reader that this was all very ingenious is not how mysteries work.

Anyway, from this point I'm probably dropping the series, or at least not contributing any more of my money to those bestseller stats. I'm sure it'll do fine without me.