YMMV / Maradonia Saga

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• Designated Hero: Maya and Joey are deemed heroic despite, at best, doing nothing, and at worst, acting sociopathic.
• Designated Villain: Apollyon is infinitely more likable and good-natured than any of the protagonists.
• Memetic Mutation: Apollyon has a Club Of Evil. That believes in teamwork.
• Narm:
  • It's hard to take the villain, Apollyon, seriously. He has a "Club of Evil" that believes in teamwork, sings "Mother Earth songs", has a water park, and keeps unicorns as pets.
  • Alana Terrence's death. After being haunted by Sutornia and Cassandra, she runs out the door screaming, hoping to find relief and peace in her soul. Her friends run after her, see headlights approaching and scream at her, but she says "I have reached the end of my road. There is no return for me!" and gets hit by a car. This is accompanied by the written sound effect "BOOM".
  • Arabella's death in the first book. Seeing a herd of unicorns galloping in her direction, she decides, rather than slither out of the way, to launch into a soliloquy before and as she is trampled to death:
    Arabella: "Oh no! Please stop! I am Arabella… I am famous for my wisdom and knowledge! You must honor me! Stay away from me! Oh no… that looks like trouble. I was always good and I don't like trouble. Who can help me? I always thought… people would… ouch… oh no… respect me… but I think… I was… wrong."
• Protection from Editors: Tesch evidently wrote one draft of each book and published it right away, ignoring all types of criticism.
• Rooting for the Empire: Tesch unintentionally made Apollyon more sympathetic than Maya and Joey. It doesn't help that he has a 'Club Of Evil' and believes in teamwork... and has a water park... and likes to sing "Mother Earth songs".
• So Bad, It Was Better: Maradonia and the Seven Bridges was edited and split into two books. The new versions have a few improvements, such as removing some of the stupidest elements of the original. This ended up ruining much of the unintentional hilarity that made the book fun to read at times, and didn't even come close to turning it into a legitimately good work. With that said, the new versions did introduce a couple of new stupid moments.
• So Bad, It's Good: Readers have been known to laugh at its quality (or lack thereof).
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: Alana Terrence. While she starts out as a (potentially murderous) bully, right before her death we're showered with details about her personal life. It's a bit of an Infodump, but it arguably makes Alana a more fleshed-out and likeable character than Maya and Joey put together.
• What Do You Mean, It's for Kids?: The books are apparently marketed to young children, but:
  • Seven Bridges has Joey calling Maya a "dumb shit" and saying "get yo' ass over the damn fence!" No, seriously.◊
  • In Gold of Ophir, Alana and her friends are haunted by Sutornia and Cassandra. This happens:
    Knives and forks from the kitchen shelves darted like arrows or mini torpedoes toward Alana and Dorothy and sliced open Alana's right arm and grinded away parts of Dorothy's scalp.
  • In Law of Blood, Larivier drugs and rapes Krimhilda. It's not even hidden in subtext — while it's not a graphic rape scene, the text makes it obvious what happened.
    The false monk Larivier had drugged Krimhilda. He now used his manhood and took advantage of her as darkness fell over Notali, the city of evil

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