@TheKittenTypewriter yeah ;-; wellll not exactly like that. I feel like McMann did go in the right direction (that is, expanding the world beyond the 7 Islands), but wasn't ambitious enough in the worldbuilding (which was one of the best parts of the original series), so it felt like it wasn't worth it to write 7 new books just for that small new piece of the world. I would have loved a huge new set of kingdoms and worlds to explore, but McMann decided to go in a different direction which wasn't as interesting. The last chapter of the last book is beautiful though, you should just read that and bear with the mild confusion :D
And yeah, a main character died ;-; I didn't mind that so much, but their death was so sudden that it didn't fit with the rest of the series. And I didn't have as strong an attachment with the new characters, so I didn't care about their struggles as much.