This really is a fairy tale. The author is just magnificent at mimicking the cadence of these oral stories and as a result any given passage feels full of symbolic significance and allegory. The one problem with that is that in a novel length story that can mess with the pacing, but it really makes the part where all the plot threads come together feel substantial. I was especially interested in the two antagonists, who were portrayed as complexly interacting with forces beyond their control and in the theology/cosmology of this world, which borrows substantial from our world but I think puts it together in interesting ways. There's an old/pagan knowledge vs corrupted Christianity thing going on that gets where you'd expect but by an unusual route. The gender related threads feel a little bit less original to me, but are executed competently. This apparently is part of a series and, while I feel like it didn't really need a followup, I am interested to see where they go with it and if they try to keep going with the fairy tale tone or not.