I'm really not sure of what I think about this. It feels like it is trying very hard to be Dickensian and Weird Fiction at the same time, but it takes something like sixty percent of the way through for the story to decide what it wants to commit to whether it was just going to be esoteric or if it wanted to have a whole big plot to it. Like, the way the cats are woven in here, I really like. It just feels too long by half, and like we're watching the author's real time decision about what he's going to do with this manuscript. Just not for me, personally.