I think in the last few chapters we saw a glimpse of where the plot could have gone, but the writer had too many flaws in the build-up. Because the build-up was so boring and disconnected, and so many of the characters were flat and forgettable, the book wears more and more on the reader until reading becomes drudgerous. If he was able to cut off more of the early bloat and get to this point where the main character's powers manifest and he begins to take over the cult sooner, the story would have become interesting sooner, and we may have had a story that would have been overall more interesting because we wouldn't have been pushed into this axed conclusion. Sadly, time was the author's enemy, and A Thing Hiding in an Erotic Cult will forever be sub-mediocre, containing only a flash - brilliant but brief - of something that could have been pretty cool.