an introduction of solid gold but only an intro

At the risk of being lynched by the fans let me put a damper on already written praise concert on the pavement.
Sure Planking confirms that control (and the word is not overused) about it. There is one more dimension qu'épique in its lines, it goes beyond that, it is a genesis us here. And oddly that's what puzzles me. The characters (searched) pass from life to death without lingering to establish history, only Abzalon and others remain and acquire an almost divine status in the end. In other epics Bordagiennes the hero remained in spite of everything human, accessible.
Here the identification is impossible, the author uses his characters to pave the way for future books ...
At the end of these 541 pages I thought "the best and the longest intro I've ever read in SF!".