YMMV / The Stars' Tennis Balls

• Moral Event Horizon: Delft crossed it early by condemning Ned to the asylum without a flicker of remorse or hesitation, with it being clear that he's done this to other people with an equal lack of scruples. Unlike the other three who engaged in a spiteful prank but would never have condoned what happened afterwards, Delft knew exactly what he was doing.
  • The other three have also done bad things that give Cotter the means to destroy them without engaging in Disproportionate Retribution that would cross this line himself, but the vilest of them is Fendeman. While his double-crossing of the tribe that would grow the "ethical" coffee is ruthless, greedy, weak-willed, selfish and had devastating consequences for them, his self-justification that it would have happened anyway because they were a minority group living under a government of a rival tribe that was brutally repressing them long before he turned up is not entirely wrong. However, his decision to make it part of the deal that he be given time to rape the 13 year old princess of the tribe purely for his own pleasure, then just discard her to live in squalor like the rest of the tribe he betrayed, and later accuse her of being a lying actress when she returns to testify about what he did to her has no justification whatsoever.
• Strangled by the Red String: The first part of the book, focusing on Ned and Portia as young lovers takes up a far greater proportion of the book than Dantes' life before the Chateau D'If does in the original. While this does give a better idea of what was stolen from them both and thus raise the dramatic stakes for Cotter's revenge, it results in the whole revenge plot taking place in the last quarter of the book, with a far faster pace and less detail than the original gave about exactly how the Count goes about destroying those who wronged him. Readers who are expecting a Magnificent Bastard's delicious and juicy slow-burn revenge with a massive Catharsis Factor payoff may be disappointed by the speed and ease with which it happens. The fact that, after all the focus given to the romance, their relationship ends with a total Downer Ending far worse than the original, while giving barely a few pages for Cotter to ruminate on what his vengeance cost him, makes it even worse.