Okay, so, everybody's saying great things about this "Symphony of the Sword", and now I'm tempted to read it. Except there are about four hundred volumes of UF material I haven't read because I can't get through the first chunk of Core material. (I don't mind injokes if I can get the common cultural background by watching more anime, or at least searching the Web, but in "Undocumented Features" (as opposed to Undocumented Features) there are a lot of references to people, places, and things from Team Eyrie's college background.) I'd just skip the first story, but it pretty much sets up everything after that; I read a few pieces of some other story, Twilight of the Gods, I think, and had almost zero clue who was what when and where.

So... hm. I'm not sure exactly what I'm asking for here. Is there a sort of Cliff Notes version of Core 1 that would give me the info I need to follow the future stories? Does one of the later Core stories recap the important points? Or would I have to read through a great amount of dross (I apologise if I'm hurting your feelings, guys, but Core 1 is olllllld; your writing skills have improved immensely since you wrote it. Not to mention there's the whole injoke angle still.) to have any clue about the good stuff?