You really haven't missed much book-wise? I skipped a few and caught up by flogs (a_sporking_rat does some great ones) and the books have gotten to a point where there are so many words dedicated to absolutely nothing happening. But every so often in all the pointless blather there are some real doozies that I'm 95% certain are LKH's attitude toward the world. For example, Dead Ice has a vampire's human servant, she's meant to be from ancient Mesopotamia and Anita reflects that "I guess you can’t go through centuries being mud-mud-dabble-wat-wat, so Irene it was." This is an actual quote, this made it to print.