What a curious book… I need to think about it for 3.5 million years. Like obviously pulling from a multitude of folklore and myth, it’s most impressive reference is to the struggle between capital r Romanticism, and like enlightenment science and culture that it is referential to. There is a bevy of like entwined understandings that make this book so compelling and frustrating to read. On one hand the language is lush and expressive, and then sometimes the characters act without thought or motivation, seemingly purposefully stuck in an almost petulant liminality—  confined to an in between of childhood and adulthood— that marks its transition in death. Like it’s got so much sometimes feels overwhelming. I think this book does opposing forces well, the fae vs faith (the religious aspects are fascinating), emotion vs reason. If this book does anything it sets me on a desire to rewatch Labryinth and marvel at the spectacle.  Everyone go read the Erl-King by Goethe.