I have a complicated relationship with Valente's books. I love love love them, until I don't. I adore her gorgeous prose, I'm thrilled by her fantastic imagination, I'm intoxicated by her amazing symbolism and ideas, and I'm inhabited by the characters she creates. But then I find myself reading a couple of pages and wandering away, forcing myself to go back to it so I can just get through it, checking how much more I need to read.... I think there just isn't enough story to keep me going for the whole book. It's like a gorgeous art film that you really need to focus on and try hard at interpreting in order to really enjoy - it's not actually entertaining, even though it can be engrossing. I suppose I could just relax and sip slowly at it without worrying about getting through in a timely manner, but the nested stories do interconnect in so many ways that if you forget things you'll be missing out - I could already tell that there were references to the first book that I only vaguely recalled. Anyway. If you like her other books, you'll like this one. There are plants growing from people, gems used as food, cities that grew from the earth and then were devoured by teethmonsters, journeys beyond death, and so many other wonderful things. But I only made it to the midpoint and then just had to stop. I'm sorry.