Yay! I will do my best to enjoy it and not gibber like a lunatic. I will definitely drop you a line when I'm settled in so we can get together and reminisce about elementary school.

I also read the books in that order and Alec made no sense to me. He's not any more mature in Swordspoint (he's much younger anyway), you just begin to understand him a bit better coupled with PotS. He's the kind of character you either love or hate though, and as far as I understand it's pretty evenly split.