ID'ing the pattern

I've gotten a number of reviews of both Midnight Never Come and In Ashes Lie that say some variant on, "this takes a while to get going, but once it does, it's pretty awesome." (Or sometimes, "this takes forever to get going, and I gave up.") I fully expect that as more reviews come in for A Star Shall Fall, I'll get a few that say the same thing.

And I've finally figured out how to characterize it in my head: these books are arrangements of dominoes.

That is to say, the opening stages of eac...