Yes, boring is the correct word indeed, which is why I borrowed this volume as a "commute book" and why it took me so long to read it. The bare-bones storyline made it easy to keep track of what was going even while reading the thing in 15-minute segments, and the poor quality of writing made it easy to put it down and forget about after I arrived at work/school.

With all the shit & vomit references, I'd say the target audience is more likely to be 10-13 year old boys who don't read that much.

Bingo. But what Colfer et. al. seem to be missing is that that demographic can easily get much moar awesomely graphic shit & vomit funz on 4chan, so why the hell would they bother turning to a book for a pale comparison?