This series first hooked me on its friendships. It was refreshing to see characters cheering and helping each other. It did give it a rather light-hearted (simplistic?) feel that did not continue through the series.

The pacing of the story was quite good, there were some slow bits in the middle but generally only persisted for a few episodes before picking up again. I felt like there were things that could have been explained - for example while we do find out some what about why Hua Qian Gu is special, it's never explained exactly why her blood kills flowers (although this could be a cultural/historical thing that I missed). I did feel like a lot of character motivations (e.g. why character's were in love, why certain characters hated others to the bone, general lack of nuance) went unexplained but that is in keeping with the "simplistic" feel. The end of the series kind of jumped off a cliff with the story and the series as a whole really suffered for that. The pacing went from slow to way too fast and the sweetness of the earlier story was canned for a brutal approach that didn't fit. It was like they had a story and at the end they realized they had to shoehorn it into a particular genre, leaving it feeling like a separate story.

The casting didn't wow me, the main cast didn't stand out as exceptional although part of that may be due to the constraints of the story. I thought Sha Qian Mo was well played, as well as Yun Yi and Shuo Feng. The music was alright but again didn't wow me.

I felt like the magical elements were well done and not terrible all things considered.

I'd recommend this series as something to give a try but I wouldn't put it at the top of the list as a "must watch".