It's hard to oversell the sheer readability of these books, so far, what a wonderful, fascinating, chilly, dangerous, but somehow at the heart of it all romantic world it is to visit, romantic in the way of old-school spy stories, with danger in every shadow, uncertainty in every encounter and ambiguity about the morality of sides and actions, but with added science fiction that creates an entirely relatable alternative Europe and an even odder reactionary throwback alternative to that Europe, and the shadowy back and forth between the two. Excellent, leisurely, twisty, but always absorbing.