I forgot that I knew that this was a trilogy so this book took me a while to get into because I expected it to resolve itself by the end of book one and so the pace was unexpected.
There's a thing that happens when one re/tells fairy tales in a contemporary framework where suddenly the whole descent into "everything is terrible" that marks the beginning of nearly every fairy tale about women becomes much more visceral. Loss of parent, loss of status, loss of autonomy no longer plays out in the distant language of myth, but the verisimilitude of the novel. Which is sometimes hard to read, especially if you are 2/3s of the way through the book and things continue to get worse.

Does God exist in this book? I always wonder why it is understood that the old gods and ways are real...but Jesus isn't? I mean, obviously he isn't, I'm Jewish, but the question stands for me in a funny way that, when we make fairy stories real, do we inherently turn away from monotheistic religion?

On to the next book! Especially if this is the set-up, I want to know what happens next.