Ups:

- I really liked Kelly's story about Jace and Liliana looking for Razaketh, he just knows how to write them and always addresses the weirdly specific questions I have. The guy can read minds
- The story where Gideon completes the Trial of Ambition was fun. I think it's safe to say people tend to like Djeru's character
- There's a flashback story about Samut, Djeru and their aven friend when they were children. IIRC, it was reasonably well written and a welcome breath of fresh air. It also helps you understand how they became the people they are
- The final story for Amonkhet was pretty epic. Razaketh shows up and we get some cool Bolas flashbacks. Oh, and it confirms that the Mending happened about 60 years ago

Downs:

- The very first story for Amonkhet is really poorly written, then the Gatewatch gets saved by a deus ex machina
- Nobody in the plane's only city seems to think it's weird that the gatewatchers look completely alien and ask stupid questions about the most mundane things while they're Scooby-Doo-ganging their way through the plot
- There's a lot of annoying pseudo character-arc stuff for Gideon, but maybe that's just me taking issue with his retcons
- Most of the Trials are handled poorly or not shown at all. Gideon somehow just has a Cartouche of Solidarity though we never see him complete the trial, the Trial of Strenght doesn't come up at all, and in a poorly written, totally incoherent story that got a lot of hate here and elsewhere on the internet, Nissa cheats her way through the Trial of Knowledge. Trust me, it's ridiculous. Nobody seems to be taking the trials in the required order either
- Samut is apparently going to become a planeswalker in the second set, which is pretty much universally seen as a disappointment

• As far as I understood, Oketra let Gideon jump over the first three trials to join Djeru's crop.
• I liked Nissa's story. It was more interesting than most of the other ones, although I found the end of it to be a bit cheap.

He only has that one cartouche, though, and no one in the crop he joins seems to think that's weird. And just skipping three trials is exactly what I'd file under "handled poorly or not shown at all". The trials are supposed to be the core of their culture and the backbone of the worldbuilding after all. Besides, why would Oketra even do that? And that Nissa thing really didn't make sense, a god can be made of mana, but not of leylines. Leylines are like the veins of the land through which mana flows. I also found the writing to be really messy and incoherent.