Okay starting with the opening, much like what applejuic had said earlier, the opening was very reminiscent of TTGL, and while that may sound very inappropriate for this sort of show, having seen it I can't imagine a better opening. This had to be the best opening I've seen this season thus far. The way they incorporated stained glass like designs to the characters, having the events shown in a story book fashion and many visual illusions made this a treat to watch.
The ending while at first doesn't have much in the visuals department, is still very good. The style here is much like the opening, however the song itself is very nice and I found myself loving it.
On the actual episode, like I mentioned, this was perfectly adapted. I haven't seen something like this recently, but they never spent too much time on anyone part and had the pace constantly on the move throughout the episode. We started out with Kujo's introduction, got to him reading his letter, meeting Cecile, meeting Victorique, meeting Grevil all in the first half and I didn't feel for a second that we were speeding through any, despite the rather fast pace. The second half was even better as they spent just enough time on the important details and didn't beat us with a hammer like the novel did, and also managed to keep Victorique's rather lengthy talk and not have it bog down the episode. Better yet, we had more than enough time to get across important things like Victorique's being unfamiliar with the outside world, the luggage scene and her rolling around (which I believe had me feeling moe for an anime the first time in my life, but that was mostly due to Yuuki Aoi's spot on voice work, which surprisingly worked a whole lot better than Chiwa Saito in the drama CD, despite me liking her a fair bit there) to help show how eccentric her personality was and her child-like fasintion with the outside world all the while showing that she was a genius.
de Blois
aka the man who's hair had been sculptured by the Gods was also great, though not sure about his VA. Kujo's VA (whatshisname?) on the other hand, was the real mishap with this anime. His voice is completely boring and uninspiring, and I only hope he does what Chiaki Omigawa (Maka from Soul Eater) had done and get better as the show goes on. The Cafeteria lady (forgot her name :P) had a very good VA also.
The music was very good as well, especially the first track when Kujo was reading his father's letter and when they got on board to the Queen Berry (which I thought the lighting on that scene to be unbelievable beautiful) but overall, I believe Madoka's track had spoil me :P It's still a great score regardless, but I hope Nakagawa will pull out those tracks that will blow me away (I have faith in him he will eventually!)
The design of the world was also good, it looked exactly like I imagined it would, and the library was the most amazing one overall. They managed to capture the scope and size of it that was described in the novel, and had the garden appear wonderful. The celling painting was also very well coloured.
I was pleased to know they didn't go overboard with the gore of the first murder here like a certain other show that was found to showing gruesome murders in the most gory way.