Runes leaves us with no direction. The quest through the whole book was to save Jeremiah (with the quest for the Staff being a necessary side trip).
Think back to how LFB ended. It was a fairly complete story with the main quest (for the Staff of Law) fulfilled, the Lords safe, and TC back in his real world (not that he was very happy about it). We knew that Foul was out there, perhaps with the Ill-Earth stone (last seen with Drool Rockworm-- how did Foul retrieve it after the Fire Lions were done with Drool?) We knew Foul was a nasty character, though we had no idea just how bad he could be. And we knew TC had done something really wrong too, though its consequences (Elena, the breaking of the Law of Death, etc, and etc) were unknown to us. LFB left us in a similar odd place, where we knew there was more to come, and a threat still looming, but we had no idea where any of it would go.
I was reading another thread about Platonics and wether or not the Land is real and was just about to add this post there, when I realised I was confusing it with tectonics. Gee whizz, I nearly made a complete idiot of myself!