Have been feeling a hankering to re-read these lately ('read' seems not to do the experience justice - in fact, some to think of it, 'experience' in itself might be better), and this time in sequence instead of madly in whatever order I could get my hands on the various books; doing so has confirmed their genius. I've also been struck by how much of the series is taken up by digressions from the main story, and at the same time by how integral these 'digressions' in fact are. Knowing the ending also gives these earlier volumes a greater gravity - a sense of inevitable and yet always [I've lost the word - something like 'circumstantial', 'opportunistic', 'tendentious', but none of those...I mean that it occurs through a series of tenuously linked events, each unpredictable and unlikely in its own right, never mind in the aggregate] gathering tragedy.
Last time: [1] & [3], [2], [4].
