Thinking about Anne Bishop books again because, despite their other failings, what bothers me most is power creep.

Bishop writes interesting fantasy worlds and there is fun to be had if you turn off your brain but she has this thing where she starts off with people with magical/other abilities that set them apart.

cool, so that's just fantasy

But then, a Major Threat arrives and by its nature is difficult or impossible for the protagonists to defeat on their own. fortunately, the protagonists have super powerful friends who can save the situation.

still cool, more or less

but THEN we find out, oh no, there's these even more powerful people out there that are crazy super powerful, but they explicitly won't intervene until everything has gone to shit. they know about the situation and COULD do something. they just don't.

and it's like...look, it would be better to have the characters figure things out on their own rather than have repeated instances in your different series where people are like "yeah I could have prevented this massacre and/or genocide, but eh."

though to be fair in the one instance it was "you didn't ask" to which the person being spoken to pointed out that contact had been cut GENERATIONS ago so no one knew they were there to ask.

this happens in two unrelated fictional universes

I don't even know which two you're talking about but it does happen in the one Anne Bishop series I remember reading, so,

what if problems could be solved without exponentially more powerful people every other book

wooper : NEVER

sugar blood : It's both the tir alainn series and the Others series

YEP. TIR ALAINN. GOT IT IN ONE /salutes

lol, I'd enjoy that series so much more without that development