I wonder how the big
Reset Button in the sky felt about it?
I think it was in INFERNAL that I first realised the RJ series had no new surprises for me. [spoiler]The contrived way that the Compendium of Srem contradicted itself just enough times to move the 'un-moveable' mark around all the characters until it ended up on the main supporting character was farcical. [/spoiler]
I was really looking forward to Jack [spoiler]disappering at the end of the book. I was so excited at the paradigm shift in the series as Jack would have to battle his way out of hell in the next book.[/spoiler] But then la-di-da he's ok, all the main characters and power realtionships thoroughly restored to the same state they were in at the beginning of the novel.
It's like any other franchised serial fiction - comic books, Star Trek. . . I knew that Jack would never become Citizen Jack and I was not in the least surprised that the baby died.
There's too much good business in the RJ franchise to mess with the winning formula at this stage of the game.
No More Coincidences. Reminds me of final parts of The Dark Tower series when Stephen King wrote [spoiler]himself into the story so as he could deliver deus ex machina without even having to think of a clever way to do it ---- like writing [/spoiler]a rule that says IT'S OKAY TO CHEAT and then acting like butter wouldn't melt when he cheated.
You can almost hear the authors of serial fiction thinking to themselves when they write these sorts of things,
"That'll speed up how many of these books I can churn out!"