The Claw of the Conciliator & The Sword of the Lictor

On the post for The Shadow of the Torturer, I seem to have thought that The Book of the New Sun was a trilogy. But it is in fact a tetralogy (that Gene Wolfe had written only to the level of a draft before the first volume's publication, not to full completion) with an additional fifth volume that acts as a coda. I'm not sure how the details got mushed for me. I'm also quite uncertain what the "as a coda" means -- kind of hoping it's 'not important' because the libraries here don't seem to have the fifth book.

In The Claw of the Conciliator, Severian continues his journey to the city of Thrax while practicing his torturer-executioner profession and in The Sword of the Lictor he finally arrives there. He eventually ends up in trouble for sparing a woman again and has to flee. The third book ends in a rather desperate note with Severian having lost the healing Claw gem and his sword Terminus Est shattered in pieces.

I don't like the science fantasy 'dying earth' setting of the series. The world's history is such a vague, myth-covered fairytale. The interrupting theater plays and read stories add to that: are they important information masked in metaphors or mere pure fluff? I really don't understand why the books are so highly rated. Somehow one just keeps reading on, though.

What I like is how Severian, despite being a first person storyteller, often hides his understanding of the current situation, surprising the reader by not being as tricked by other actors as it had first seemed. I particularly enjoyed how he took out the malevolent ancient autarch he met in the Sword.

I will continue on to the fourth volume, The Citadel of the Autarch, to see how things (hopefully) end. I'm guessing the book catches up with the present where Severian is telling the story and the fifth book would be what follows afterwards.