This teeters at 3.5 but I’m rounding it up because it is pretty unique. Dark fantasy with Fugue states and witches and sex workers in a pretty wild, difficult to explain setting. Mostly because of the soft world building, which is just a preference of mine, I find I much prefer hard world building with settings that depart from “default”. Otherwise you are just rolling with stuff continually, only some of which is explained and deemed important, but all of it impacts your understanding of the world, typically.

Interesting character concepts and setting didn’t quite rescue this from the prose work and premise that manifested to be a bit dull, and the actual characterization. Its just not for me stylistically, which made it hard to get invested. That said, it really is filled with atypical dark fantasy, and a few things do strike a chord. Maybe a book to revisit in the future when I’m in a more amiable mood, but typically in my reading journey I get harder to impress in particular with prose styling and characterization, so I don’t know. Clearly, I’m conflicted.