I just finished the entire series, and since people hated on my tier lists I made last night, here are some opinions I have that will not garner any praise:

1. Not enough major characters die in the whole series. I think we get Cosca, Gorst, Orso, Jezal, Dogman, Calder, Stour? It feels like West, Cosca, Orso, and Calder are the only ones in 10 books that feel like they were a major character and their death isn’t just old age or something. Jezal hadn’t been a main character in many books and dies off screen, and Dogman dies of old age. Gorst feels not a big enough character to really make the list. Just feels like too few given how crazy the series is on war after war, revolution, death death death, more war.
2. On that note, sometimes felt like too many characters kept coming back from the dead or living too long. Caurib surviving Black Dow’s axe to the head? Come on… Cosca surviving a gut wound? Vitari continuing to be a badass for multiple books after getting rekt by The Bloody Nine?
3. Bayaz is a piece of shit because he’s incompetent, greedy, selfish, and regressive, not because he kills and manipulates people by the thousands.
4. On that note I like Bayaz. He views people as ants and I’m so into it. I just wish he had better goals.
5. The biggest tragedy in the series is that the status quo of a system of oppression and greed is maintained at the end, despite The Great Change’s valiant attempt to disrupt it. Judge fell horribly short of casting off the elite ruling class.
6. The First Law series is better than the Age of Madness series. AoM felt a bit more of a dynamic story and a greater breadth of great characters, but the insane quality of the characters in TFL is unmatched. Logen, Glokta, Cosca, Ferro, West, Bayaz, and Jezal > Savine, Leo, Vick, Broad, Orso, Clover, and Rikke. I wanted to like the characters in AoM more, I wanted to love Vick and Rikke more than I did, but they just don’t match up.
7. Calder was never really shown to be cunning. This felt like an undeserved “tell instead of show”.
8. Ardee is a pretty disappointing character - seems like the woman character with the least agency. I do like that all she does is drink and complain, though.
9. Rikke doomed Orso, and for no reason at all.
10. On that note, The Trouble With Peace sets Orso up for a homerun amazing character, but The Wisdom of Crowds absolutely dumpsters this notion.
11. I don’t like Logen’s story with the addition of Red Country and Sharp Ends. They don’t fit Logen of the original series, and aren’t even consistent with themselves. His character is quite inconsistent. The scrapping of the Bedesh descendant angle and retconning made his whole story clumsy.
12. The Great Change was a bit cheesy and over the top. You can’t even get two people with the same goal to do be on the same page, how is everyone universally just so on board and then so ready to drop it the minute Leo charges back in?
13. I don’t like how Rikke is not that inspiring of confidence, then becomes incompetent (because her Long Eye is a fraud), then turns out to be a mastermind (because her Long Eye is legit), then the twist is that her Long Eye actually didn’t do anything to help her. So then her immediate transition into super competent and badass is a bit unearned in retrospect.
14. Savine has almost no character growth in Age of Madness. Every time she seems like she might have some, she regresses.
15. There’s too many random ass (usually magical) things referenced (which should have big ramifications) and then never mentioned again. The Great Temple of Thond from Sharp Ends, Master Poisoners in Better Served Cold, the mechanical dragon and the Dragon People in Red Country, Logen speaking to spirits in The Blade Itself.

I just finished the entire series, and have quite a few unanswered questions or things that just don't quite make sense:

1. Logen is shown to be absolutely psychotic in the past, so why does Threetrees and the rest follow him?
2. Why is Bethod’s entire mega-army just fine with allying with Shanka?
3. Hildi showing up with Bayaz at the very end is jarring and doesn’t make much sense.
4. How does Savine still have money and power both during and after The Great Change? They destroyed all the banks and more or less destroyed the systems of ownership. The fact that so many of the wealthy and powerful remain so feels like a big plot hole.
5. Why hasn’t anyone tried to kill Bayaz? Calder is kept cowed for decades because of one threat, but deals with threats all the time. Same with Jezal. Bayaz almost killed himself fighting in Before They Are Hanged, and is clearly vulnerable.
6. Fenris the Feared, an absolute menace for thousands of years, turns out to only be able to do it because Caurib is casting spells near him the entire time?
7. Threetrees’ gang knocking West and Burr off their horses made no sense. “We’re smart so we knew where you’d ride ahead of other people and put up a rope you definitely wouldn’t see”
8. Characters just magically know stuff when it’s convenient. Bayaz knows everything but didn’t see The Great Change coming. Cabrian somehow knows where Bayaz and co. are in Before They Are Hanged. Yulwei knows where Ferro is. There are definitely more examples.
9. The scale of these wars that happen throughout don’t quite fit with what happens with the plot. Almost every book there seems to be a complete depletion of an army, only for the next book to have enough troops to be occupying somewhere.
10. Glokta’s plot to have Zuri near Savine when the time is right to attack Sulfur is wildly luck-based. Savine almost dies multiple times, which would render this plot useless.

Liquid are reported to be looking to upgrade ultimate.

Any thoughts on who would be available and an upgrade?

I wanted to get a vibe check of how people feel about these apps right now in May 2026. It has been super tedious, but I've been using all three apps daily for a few months now, logging my reading in all three. I'll give some pros and cons impressions I have, but would love to hear from others.

Hardcover

• Pros
  • Feels like it has the most promise, but is definitely not there yet.
  • The database of books and how the info can be viewed has a lot of promise, but is not thorough enough yet.
  • I gotta say I quite like the design and aesthetic. I think it could be tightened a bit and polished, but its pretty good.
  • Prompts is a pretty neat feature.
  • Mobile and desktop versions.
  • A public roadmap! Please take note, everyone, this is what all apps should be doing. Even if you don't allow user submissions, the visibility and transparency is amazing.
  • Pretty good stance against AI.
  • Independent and self funded.
• Cons
  • A lot of the UI is just too cluttered and noisy. A lot of menus and pages feel like they could be heavily reduced down or things could be nested into subsections or submenus.
  • They make it very clear that it is a work in progress and is not fully working, but the stats are whack as hell. Definitely has a lot of potential though!
  • The Supporter plan doesn't really offer anything that is worth it other than supporting the vision.
  • They have said they will open source the code, which would allow more people to contribute and help, but this has yet to happen.
  • Many little bugs throughout. Like how the selected editions of books can be out of sync from page to page, where some pages show a different edition.
  • The most frustrating bug is trying to update progress of a book on mobile. The UI skips and jumps multiple times and you have to erase the previous progress in order to enter the new progress.

Margins

• Pros
  • Hands down, well beyond any other tracker, this is the best UI and design. Extremely simple, straightforward, very visually appealing. Has a few layout and user flow flaws in my opinion, but still so much better than any other.
  • Emphasis on minimalism and distraction free. Features to block distractions from the rest of your phone and just focus on reading. Love it.
  • On iPhone they have a widget, which I find pretty great.
  • Pretty good requests for feedback/features sprinkled throughout.
  • Stats are really good. Just add a line graph please, and this would be HELLA solid!
  • A well integrated Want to Read section, baked in better than Up Next on StoryGraph
• Cons
  • Heavy AI usage and positioning. At least give me the option to toggle off Search by Vibes so I don't have it cluttering what I want to see.
    • And the vibes are so frequently wrong. That's part of the problem with AI integration, it's a black box of bad results. At least StoryGraph has tons of data on genres, moods, etc to help the accuracy.
  • Some of the flaws in the layout and user flows.
    • "Rate us on App Store" and "Become a Member" are stuck at the top no matter what, which is pretty bad.
    • Library is just a list, feels half baked.
    • The settings button is in some pages but not others, and isn't always in the same place
  • The most closed source and mysterious of all of them. Add something to the website about the team, have a Discord, have a roadmap, do ANYTHING please.
  • The Community section is nonexistent. You can only search by name which is not unique. They seem to think you'll just sync your contacts and connect with only people you know their numbers of.
  • Why do I have to go INTO the book and into a sub menu in order to finish a book that I'm currently reading!? And why is that sub menu a checkmark???
  • The metadata and reviews of books are dubious at best. Reviews seem to just pull from GoodReads reviews, so I don't think you can even see reviews people put into Margins. There is no changing of editions, only covers, so I'm skeptical of how updating progress using pages works.

StoryGraph

• Pros
  • The database of books and editions is probably the best out there.
  • It's quite simple and bug free.
  • Everyone always references the stats. Personally, I don't find use out of any of them but the Books & Pages stats, so I don't feel like this is that much of a pro.
  • A public roadmap!
  • Mobile and desktop versions
  • Buddy Reads, Readalongs, and Book Clubs seem like they have promise, but also seem very half baked for the moment and no real plans to improve them on the roadmap as far as I can see.
  • Time Period Wrap-Up Graphics also seem like they have promixe, but are hard to find, clunky, and seem a bit half baked as well. They don't really look that good and have to be generated each time you look at them.
  • Independent and self funded.
• Cons
  • The UI, the look and feel. This has got to be one of the worst looking out there right now.
    • Don't get me wrong, I love it being more simple, but god this looks like a first draft prototype.
    • The look and feel of this is just so clunky.
    • And a few user flows could definitely be improved, like getting to the Up Next list, or starting to track the progress of a new book.
  • The homepage is a bit cluttered with unnecessary stuff, Recommendations, Popular This Week, and Giveaways could all be in other tabs (Giveaways does actually have it's own tab)
  • There isn't much directly visible use of AI in the product, but they definitely are heavy on using it according to their documentation.
  • Overall the Plus membership doesn't super feel worth it - the stats don't feel useful, the wrap-up isn't great, the main plus is the roadmap which doesn't feel worth it by itself.

Overall I wish Hardcover was better, I would be all in on them. But they just still have a lot of bugs, don't make it that worthwhile to be a paid member, and don't provide much of a way to help contribute to make it better. StoryGraph is in much needed improvement, and kind of feels like the new legacy of GoodReads. Margins looks so SO good but is also in some ways the worst.