I find it amusing that this thread is still going a year and a half after the original posting. Harddaysnight explicitly states that the LIR trilogy is an over-the-top fantasy. A reader expecting something different is perplexing.
SOL has many (a majority?) of stories in which female breasts defy gravity, male appendages set horses to weeping with envy, the women and wives dazzlingly beautiful, and the handsome virile men are SAS, SEAL, Ranger types who can shoot all day and go all night, sometimes simultaneously. Oppositely, there are the wimps and cucks who seem to have a following. I simply don't read those genres, despite the adherents and proponents of each, but that's called free choice.
The popularity of the Bond, Bruce Lee, Batman, Superman, assorted Marvel, DC Comic heroes, and the action/adventure fantasies of Arnold and Jeremy, as unbelievable as LIR, should be proof that sometimes pure escapism is what we're looking to read. And, how can we forget our friendly Hobbits for belief suspension? Given the current state of world affairs, escapism is perhaps an occasional coping necessity.
Keep writing HDN, you have an appreciative audience for LIR when escapism calls. The principal's Congressional testimony was worth the price of admission and a scene I'd like to see in the real world of nasty partisan politics.