Book review: Maker of Universes

Ah PJF, familiar from my childhood; see my review of The Green Odyssey. Unlike that, Maker of Universes is one of his classics, and almost one of the classics, but sadly although the central idea is great, the trappings are not. The Goodreads reviews say this in more detail.

I'll assume you've read that or similar, so know the setup.

The lower, antient-greek-garden tier, is at first glance a paradise: everyone lazes around eating and drinking of the abundance. As things go on it becomes a bit darker, but I think he could, and a better book would, have really gone into the horror of it: people, transmogrified into odd shapes, condemned forever as pets of a now-absent lord, with nothing to do except drink themselves into a stupor as their past life fades away.

Above that, the teutonic and amerind tiers are less interesting; the writing is somewhat bland; and somehow despite the vast canvas he has given himself the situation is rather bland too.