First things first, I did like this book. The prose was gorgeous, and if you can lose yourself in the language, the pages really fly by. I loved the premise of a "sexually transmitted city". Having read his works not too long ago, I couldn't keep from making comparisons to China Mieville's works and themes - the author even used the word "chthonic"! 
 However - speaking of Mieville, comparing against his works helps to illustrate my frustration with Palimpsest. Mieville's New Crobuzon is just as crazy, just as out there, just as malignantly beautiful as Palimpsest. But when I read about New Crobuzon, I had the feeling that the city was fully fleshed out, an actual entity, so each new "crazy" thing (cactus people! handlingers! the weaver!) was just a new piece of a larger picture being revealed to me. Palimpsest, on the other hand, felt like the author was making it up as she went, throwing things out in fits of inspiration or poetry for the sake of lovely language. The overall result is the same as the first example, but the experience of reading it was not nearly as satisfying. 
 The power of the imagery held me for the first half of the book or so, but as it went on, I began to feel like the prose was there to mask a thin story. The characters were distant from each other for most of the book, there didn't seem to be much of an actual conflict ... I felt like the book started and ended strongly, but in between was just moving from one pretty yet disjointed image to another.