Yeah I guess that's what Feist was talking about when he said he was successful because he broke the rules. It makes sense that the work was a mashup of previous works, it seemed clear that outside of his set pieces things really got bogged down.

I read magician first and after that trying to read Lotr was going from a carnival ride to a cathedral, long slow and overly rich.

The dizzying heights of individual expansion that pug/tomas got to over the series has died with the 80s and thanos I guess. That scene in the colosseum raining fire raindrops still sits vividly in my mind, why the greatest hits from magician have never been made into a more expressive media is obvious financially but nags at me nonetheless.