This trilogy kept me off balance. Characters didn't stay in neat, enduring categories of good or bad. They kept doing positive and negative things for their own selfish reasons. On the aggregate, it eventually worked out for the better for all involved. (But not in a Rand-ian market way.) Just enough of the characters were biased just enough toward the common good that they got through the tumultuous years with positive spin.This trilogy has a lot of big ideas, delivered in little drips-drops and glimpses through oodles of character-driven plot. Frustrated me, but in the final pages the payload came through.I'm glad I made time for all 1800 pages (or whatever..).