Wicked brilliant. Amazingly narrated. That's all I have time to say about it today. I can definitely see why this book comes up again and again in "what fantasy should I have read in the past few years" discussions. Nominated for a World Fantasy Award? 2nd place in the Locus poll for first novel? (How many first novels are nominated for the World Fantasy Award? Daryl Gregory's Pandemonium and James Enge's Blood of Ambrose in recent memory, as well as Hal Duncan's Vellum and Susanna Clarke's Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, and two novels in 2004 (Jeff VanderMeer's Veniss Underground and KJ Bishop's The Etched City), Steven Erikson's Gardens of the Moon, Vikram Chandra's Red Earth and Pouring Rain, Brooke Stevens's The Circus of the Earth and the Air, and probably more I missed and that's just since 1995, so maybe it's not ALL that rare. One per year? They're all (that I've read) excellent novels, so maybe I have a new search algorithm for "what book to read next...")