Similar to how each of the Elves of Lessa books have the same type of romantic developments, each of K. M. Shea‘s Magiford trilogies share a similar story structure:
Book 1 has an underpowered young woman get entangled with an overpowered man, in Book 2 the protagonist becomes powerful in her own right and the two separate for some reason, then in Book 3 they become an established couple and overcome a persistent adversary.
Hall of Blood and Mercy is the first of these trilogies, doing a great job of introducing the setting without resorting to infodumps or reams of exposition. The only thing I can really criticize is how incredibly nonsensical the break-up in the second book is. Just a complete lack of logic to the point that the characters themselves don’t even try to defend it.
The second trilogy, Court of Midnight and Deception, builds on the groundwork lain by the previous one while suffering from a similar issue with the separation segment. Once again we have a decision that just completely lacks any sense, but at least in this case the characters get over it fairly quickly. Only other potential issue might be that many of the events in here lean toward the goofier side of things.
Finally we come to the Pack of Dawn and Destiny trilogy (since I’ve already talked about the Gate of Myth and Power one). This set of novels stands out for both switching up the formula a bit and being absolutely terrible. It switches things up by having the main couple already know each other from the beginning and essentially skipping over the separation event, while ending up the worst of the trilogies by far due to its overwhelming level of ridiculousness and poorly thought-out plot developments.
Fortunately, that third trilogy is pretty divorced from the other three (the series’ background conspiracy doesn’t even play an explicit roll in it) and can be safely skipped without issue.
