Walrus and the Warwolf

A couple of months ago, I got The Walrus and the Warwolf. It's a serial collected into a book. I get the feel that the writer woke up every Monday morning, said "I need to mail in another installment on Wednesday, what shall I do to Drake this week?" and rolls a dice to see which plot thread to pull. Drake struggles for power and reputation, evades the hunters sent by his former master, tries to win the woman he lusts for ("loves" would be overstating it, at least at first); he lies and schemes when he can, fights when he must. It's pretty much the fantasy literature equivalent of cotton candy. It would be the perfect thing to read if you had the flu and couldn't focus on anything that required thought.
Two notable points:
1.   There are a couple of places where at least one page worth of text is missing. For instance, you're reading about them escaping through the desert, and when you turn the page Drake is saying "What is it to me if Jon was kidnapped?". You don't miss anything important (in fact, you can skip the whole book and not miss anything important), but it's an editorial mistake I'd never run across before.
2.   China Mieville's foreword said that the whole point of the book was that Drake never grows up, never matures. Drake does mature, and the book has at least one chapter of soul-searching on this subject, so it's not entirely subtle. Mieville is simply wrong. This is the only occasion on which an author has managed to lower his standing in my eyes by the foreword he wrote.