What if James Axler had been a real person? One author who had written 100+ DLs? (as many newbies mistakenly surmise)
We all know it isn't the case, but adopting that broad, if deluded view has some upsides.
The variation in style and execution, the long stretches of weak work could then be laid to stages in "his" life. His "blue period." His "addicted to huffing whipped cream period." His "divorcing from his eighth wife period." His "tax audit period."
The wild swings in product quality from one book to another could also result from a psychological abnormality like multiple personality disorder. JA didn't write DL number 109; one of his many alter egos did. The one who sucks his thumbs and only eats white food.
Where am I going with this?
I think it is much easier to forgive all the lapses if there is an understandable cause, something we can all relate to. None of us (even the people who wrote the books) can figure out why GE operates the way it does. And posters here have been chasing their tails trying to unravel that for a decade. So why not put a single human face on it? Start out with the proposition that JA is a real, albeit flawed individual, terribly overworked and underpaid, who sometimes hits the mark and sometimes not? Instead of calling out this or that writer for hire for errors or bad books, blame it on the gin and tonics JA was into, or the Thai porn, or the car accident, or "Billy Bob."
If this personalization doesn't appeal to you, there is another option—in my view somewhat less satisfying. Assume no real people ever had anything to do with the series. That the books were complied from strips of printed text spun in a drum, like Bingo numbers. Some clerk in the Harlequin tower pulls out enough word strips to fill 320 pages, and presto, DL#112. Some of the books are very good (100 monkeys writing Shakespeare), but most are not. And errors are repeated because the strips are returned to the drum after each use. In this case there is no one to blame. Not even the clerk. And buying and reading DLs becomes a profound Act of Faith that the universe we inhabit is more than merely random.
These aren't the only possibilities, of course. I'd be interested to hear other viewpoints, if you have them.
AP