I have such a complicated relationship with this series, with its self aware cynicism and its unlikeable protagonists, and yet this third volume managed to pull the story to a satisfactory and even magically optimistic conclusion. Happy endings all around, and I'm not sure exactly how I feel about that. 
 Volume 1 was fascinating in how it attacked the tropes and pulled whimsical magic into a hyperrealistic setting. Volume 2 was a great improvement on Volume 1, even as it offered greater sadness and ugliness and complications. But 3 feels tonally so much different, almost as a real paean to the storybook worlds it once riffed. The characters finally had time to grow up and leave aside their adolescent cynicism. Perhaps the author did too.