You'd think that amongst the three of them they could have gotten more things right in these books.
Let's start with the full series title, An Awfully Beastly Business. That's pretty decent, actually. It sounds intriguing - a little spooky, maybe a little ghastly.
But then we have subtitles like Werewolf versus Dragon, Sea Monsters and Other Delicacies, and Bang Goes the Troll. Each of them makes sense only when you get to the second-to-the-last chapter of each book.
They aren't all that clever or original on their own. If these were the main titles of three books, I wouldn't give them a second look.
Each book is like an original Batman series episode (or pair of episodes) or maybe more like a weekly cartoon with a hero. You know who the hero is and that he will save the day. You also know at the end that the arch-villain will be back to try again next week, or in this case, in the next book.
The books are excessively wordy. There are large sections of descriptions of fantastic beasts that you never hear of again and that have no relevance to the current story. You're also left wondering if anyone else in the world knows about these dozens of semi-magical creatures. Humans are accused of mistreating them in the past, but this "universe" never really extends into the real world (at least, through the first three books).
The stories are cartoon-like, yet there are parts that are unnecessarily gory. One of the lead characters is a doctor. When she performs an operation on a beast's brain, you get more details than you really need or want.
This same doctor almost always says "please" when speaking to someone. Not that "please" is a bad word, but no one in real life speaks as she does. (I think.)
When not being overly polite or excessively wordy, the characters love to speak in cliches, even more than Star Wars characters. "I'll get you for this!" the villain shouts. It reminds me of Inspector Gadget, which is infinitely better, and I exaggerate only a little.
Language is a problem throughout the series. You probably expect some of the talking beasts (The main character is a werewolf, and another lead character is a giant.) to have their own manner of speaking English. That's good, fine. But when the character begins with an "accent" and then doesn't consistently speak with it, that's bad.
The stories themselves have the potential to be decent, but there's just too much awful stuff surrounding them for me to recommend them. Find something less awful. It won't be hard to do.
