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So now I managed to finish reading the first eleven chapters or the first volume and will start the next one, while still waiting for the book to arrive, which will probably be in about a month.

That sentence reads as surreal as the life Jo slips in, somehow. A bit less fancy for me, admittedly. Which makes it more important to enjoy the somewhat baroque, hermetic tale of Jo and Ysabel, the Duke and the Chariot. And wonder if the fact that just this morning, a boar destroyed a pool at my friends place has any particular meaning, or if it had a name.

But to the point--the reader interested in modern fantasy, romantic and somewhat dark serials or books about pretty recent northwestern US cities is advised to go out and purchase the first four volumes of this serial, because not only will they like to learn why I make up stories of boars with names, but also because we need to encourage the author to write more, preferrably faster without sacrificing creativity or thoroughness, because I really fear that, just proceeding to read, I'll again catch up with him writing.

Well... so how did this start? -- Nearly twenty years ago, perhaps 18?, I stumbled over this series. Read it in the web browser in the office, after work, sometimes instead of work. I liked the story, I liked the characters, the language, everything. But at some point I had caught up with the author's progress.

So I read other things, had family and work taking up more of my time, rarely thought about this series but never really got into it again.

2022, when I discovered the fediverse, social.tchncs.de/@kiplet was one of the first accounts I noted, and it only took a few weeks for me to connect the dots. And have a look into the series again, but starting to read from chapter one again, seeing there's now a really long novel unfolding itself was both appealing and felt like a challenge -- I didn't.

And now, these days... 20 years anniversary. So I ordered the hardcover, and got impatient and started reading in the browser, after work, and sometimes at work, and in between family things, and I'm really looking forward to see if I, again, will catch up with Kip Manleys writing progress, or if he'll conclude his story before I reach its end.

And after those ramblings -- if you like fantasy, and fancyness, swords and knights and long-winded sentences and a big vocabulary and really interesting characters with lots of character you should have a look and a read, perhaps in the browser. And if you like to reward authors of stories that really pull you in and who (I suppose) put a lot of their time and creativity into creating worlds that are really close to our reality but not exactly the same, you might, after due consideration, conclude that paying them for a paper copy is not bad, because it supports their life and work and allows you to put something to brag about into your bookshelf.