Malevolence is an excellent hounted house horror adventure. Like all horror adventures it becomes truly great if the GM knows what the players are (un)comfortable with and puts in that extra bit of effort personalising some things here and there. The adventure, as written, even has some suggestions and opportunities for that mentioned, as well as a horror content list. This helps the whole group be on the same page about what to expect and tune the tone of the adventure. From slow-burn horror to a more manic Scooby-Doo-like romp, I think the adventure is flexible enough to support either narrative style.
The mysteries and secrets of the adventure are well-written, the themes are solid and foreshadowing and narrative cohesion allow for great "aha!" moments for the players.
Mechanically some encounters can be difficult, depending on party composition and luck. It is overall a challenging adventure with some resource-scarcity. If the party needs some more help to through, I'd suggest leaving some healing items and striking runes in the house. Including the research subsystem and challenging fights players should expect the exploration to take some in-game time and be ready to retreat and take breaks.
I can only reccommend it to anyone interested in a horror adventure!
The second Alien Archive is a fun book! There is a variety of playable races, and also many different kinds of monsters, suitable for very different campaigns. The "general" stat blocks for herd creatures and predators also make GMing alien adventures more comfortable, I'd say.
The twists on "known" creatures like Orcs are creative. I have not seen a huge amount of reprints from the Adventure Paths (though there are several), and some of the monsters from Pathfinder are ones I'd say would be on the harder side to rebuild/convert properly.
The artwork is very good throughout the book.
There's a lot of nice stuff in this book:
Several fun looking feats, most of chapter 4 looks useful and/or fun for players (trophies from enemies!), and the companion and familiars stuff is cool to look through.
I'm also a great fan of the new/reprinted races and options for them.
The shifter did not strike my fancy, but some of the other archetypes in this book strike me as cool and thematic.
