The first three books in Benjamin Medrano‘s Through the Fire series alternate between good and middling. Although there’s nothing to complain about in The Avatar’s Flames, the pacing in Queen of Ice leaves much to be desired while The Obsidian Palace marks a return to quality despite some uneven pacing in the second half. That said, I do not like how it concluded (neither in the palace itself nor the last-minute harem expansion) and have no desire to continue the series past this point.
The sixth of Stuart Grosse‘s Reborn as the First Boss novellas is an effectively self-contained dungeon run. I’m not really sure at this point what the author’s going for since there’s little overarching storyline and the episodic conflicts don’t seem to have any notable relation.