Haha, yes, you've NAILED it! And I agree: I keep going back for, as you say, "several hundred pages in which my own values are so perfectly reflected back to me and made praiseworthy and heroic." I just can't help wishing he could also write characters! I can only imagine how utterly obsessive I would be about his books if he managed to do both!

(I deliberately reread The Lions of Al-Rassan after the Brexit referendum result for precisely this reason, because it was the only work of fiction I could think of that articulated this particular pain so specifically)

Oh, that makes so much emotional sense!