Well, more like a 2.5, really, since I did muddle though it after all. But the sheer absurdity of the execution just left me cold. I almost felt as though the author was so enamored of his conceit of creating a narratively jerky, post-modern young adult fantasy novel and then lampshading the jerkiness and its failure that he either failed to notice or ignore the fact that pointing out the problems with the book do not fix them. The storytelling was uneven, neither of the main characters were particularly relatable and the way the story was framed just left me...on the outside. I could not get into this story and for all its (self) referentiality and in-jokes, I remained unimpressed.