I hate it when I'm the only guy who doesn't like something.
I've had enough Ben Phillips reading dead pan hardboiled detectives, book collectors, bounty hunters, etc for a lifetime. Horror noir (horrnoir?) is fine as a genre, but I'm ready for some more variety.
Also, he seemed particularly dense for the implied world-weariness. He telegraphed his presence with the flash powder at the bar, he just forgot to put that burning desert glyph on his eyes before confronting the wizard lady, he went back to her house while under the spell, and everything after that seemed to be one stroke of luck after another. None of these other hard case book collectors went after this woman with a see-things-as-they-really-are spell?
He commented at the end the Merlin should have been as clever as a book collector, but the only reason the book collector survived was that the wizard lady left a very large quantity of Defense Against Everything cream within arm's reach of her prisoner.
This world isn't holding up for me, but I would rather see another world, anyway.