The Book of Love

I wasn't sure whether Kelly Link's magic would work in long (or ultra) long form, but I found this wildly successful while being true to the genre that is unique to Link. Rather than read a Link book linearly or narratively, you have to pay attention to the puzzle of how you feel when characters talk about coins or doors or rabbits or wolves or structural racism and follow that feeling to figure out what's actually happening.

Perhaps as a necessary concession (although a move I found kind of disappointing), Link places three info-dump chapters roughly evenly throughout the book to literally catchup anyone for whom creepy vibes are insufficient explanation. Each of these follow an exposition that takes the narrative in an expansive dimension, opening up the story from the part that proceeded it. I found the first two thirds of the book wildly successful proceeding in this way, and the back third a little too conventional, while still quite good.

Overall, the book reminded me a lot of the best of Dianna Wynne Jones, where you start to believe that anyone could secretly be anyone else, while also being Loki and while you're unlikely to guess right, you're rewarded for being skeptical about fixed identity.

I also found the book thematically successful as well as tonally so. The major themes of the book: the structures that we take for granted even when they don't work for us, and the magically mundanity of love of all forms were deeply seeded throughout the book without being overpowering. A lot of the negative reviews weren't prepared for the balance between epic plot and quiet meditations on the power of relationships and identity and change, but that's what made the book so worth it for me.