Mel Todd-- yet another Kindle unlimited author who feels not quite ready for prime time

I read a lot-- I'm a fast reader and I spend a lot of time of public transit-- so I get a lot of mileage out of light fantasy and science fiction novels. Because of that, Kindle unlimited is a good deal for me as I easily can go through four or five books a week. But I just finished a binge of reading Mel Todd, and I can't help but think that if these books were published in an era where her work were subjected to a little more professional scrutiny it might have been better.

So: The "Noble's Luck" trilogy. This is a workmanlike gas-lamp fantasy about magic returning to the world, the three primary characters are a young noblewoman and two of her relatives. Each book is from the point of view from a different character, but it covers the same span of time, in which the three characters are largely living in the same house and experiencing the same situations. Because the major outline of the plot for all three books is basically identical, there is no suspense in books two and three because all the plot points are known. (E.g. will the main character in book three get caught doing something dangerous? No, because we already learned that he wasn't caught in book 1.) This might have been interesting if the character development and inner dialogue of the three characters were superbly written, but Ms. Todd, while quite competent, does not rise to that challenge. In my view, it would have been much better as a longer book, changing point of view between the three characters.

And then there's the ending. All three books end on virtually the same cliffhanger (though book two advances the plot a tiny bit farther than book one and three), and you are forced to sign up for the authors mailing list to receive a free "short story" which is actually the final chapter. Good for her, I guess, in getting people to sign up for her mailing list, but it's kind of a cheat.

I didn't mind this that much since I'd already paid for the books via subscription, but if I'd purchased these individually I'd be wanting my money back.

Still, it was good enough that I subjected myself to her earlier series, "Twisted Luck," and I'm somewhat sorry I did. Lots of huge plot holes and illogical developments. For example, a important plot point is what caused the death of >!the main characters twin brother when they were children!<. It's a huge mystery that the main character tries for figure out for years, including doing graduate level work related to the topic and even consulting magical residents of other realms. Well, it turns out that the cause is something that statistically would be very noticeable: >!In the novels, approximately 25% of people discover they have magic when they are young adults, but if they are twins (identical, fraternal, natural, caused by IVF, it doesn't matter) then one twin will get magic and the other will always die unless they are over 1000 miles apart. Considering a little over 100,000 twins per year are born in the US, if a quarter of them became magicians and at the same time the other twin always died unless they were across the country, people would start to notice. Especially since, in the world of the novels, it had been going on since at least the mid-19th century, an era in which it would be less likely that family members would be 1,000 miles apart!<

I wish she'd had more critical beta readers, or something. She has some interesting ideas, but it's just not quite there.