The Passage left me a bit cold, too. The impression I got was that he either hit a block and couldn't get around it, but had written so much that he couldn't bear to start over, or that an editor had a quiet word about the length it was already getting to. Either way, it came out to 'Invest in there characters! Invest! Invest!...Oh never mind, they're gone now. But look! New characters! Invest in them!'...and tbh it annoyed me
and left me with the feeling that he might just pull the same trick again, which meant I went forward with the brake on.
Not sure if it means anything, but I got to the end eventually and found I was a little bit curious about what came next...yet still haven't bought the second book. (And there was almost a funny/apt typo there: "...still haven't bought the second
bool".
)