For me, these ones have (inevitably) always palled somewhat by comparison to the Covenant books, but they're still better than most fantasy out there, epic and/or mainstream and otherwise. Darkly compelling and richly imaginative, I'm not yet tired of them. (Also provoked to laughter by a few of the one-liners, though I'm not sure if they were deliberately funny.)
I only own The Mirror of Her Dreams, so having finished it on Monday night, I walked out to the Pines library to pick up the second, and was amused to notice that the best-dressed people in the library were the two librarians - though that observation may say as much about me as it does about the sartorial standards of all concerned.
On another note, on my way out from the library, I noticed a flyer descriptively (and, I felt, slightly dramatically - though again, that's probably just me) titled "Librarians Choice: The Top 100", which turned out to be a listing of the results of Victorian librarians' votes for their "all-time favourite Top 100 reads available @ your library". From my perspective, the most interesting one was Brideshead Revisited hitting number 7 - very much a 'librarian' book, I think. Other favourites of mine to appear included The Secret History (another very 'librarian' book - # 35), The Gormenghast Trilogy (# 58) and Wizard of Earthsea (# 75) (also, the first "His Dark Materials" book, Northern Lights, was # 98). Elsewhere, most of the usual suspects - Austen, Winton, etc (though one wonders what sort of people - to whom custodianship of our libraries has been entrusted, recall - would collectively cast enough votes for the Melway - Greater Melbourne Street Directory for it to reach number 55)...
