Teres

I get needing the characters to cooperate for the story to go in a certain direction, but surely there's a more organic way to do that than constant mind-control.

There absolutely is, and it's 100% just lazy writing.

...I wish I hadn't heard that. Good lord, Douglass, what is your deal?!

Too late to ask her now.

I swear to god these multiple scenes of naked kids in every book, and even two instances of a child or infant being made to strip for no reason that is ever given just get more and more bizarre and uncomfortable. Between that and all the incest and the many, MANY really creepy moments where someone is hit on (including mouth to mouth kissing) by their own grandparent (and there's even a love triangle in the sequel trilogy involving a young woman and BOTH of her grandfathers) I'm absolutely certain there was something really fucked up in her past. She even thought Grandpa incest was a perfectly normal sexual fantasy to have and laughed about it like she had no idea what a disgusting thing to say that was.