I'm not a fan of short books. I like the middle of the road sized, where there's some room to build out a storyline and characters.
It's about stories of the region and as I'm not a native I'm confused as to whether the stories' characters are based on reality or made up [for some reason this is important to me, don't yet know why] and lost track of who was who and who was with who. I prefer not to get lost in the telling of a story.
I had a hard time becoming attached to the stories or the characters both the book's and the stories'. See 2.