This is not an easy read - like many of the beasts within them, the nested stories are complicated chimeras. They can be difficult to keep track of and unless I misread or misunderstood (either of which is entirely possible) the first one contains a major timeframe problem. And it starts out slow. This might not sound like I "really liked it," but it does pick up and I did find myself invested in the characters and the stories. Valente's language is lovely and her proclivity for twisting tropes around is used more effectively (by which I mean it comes off much less twee) than it was in The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making.