This was a truly captivating and unique book that really has no comparison. It is a perfect mixture of whimsy and grisly bluntness that I found really charming most of the time. The world and the story is fascinating, and when it gets going, kept me engrossed. But the PACING! Never before have I considered that perhaps there's TOO much world building in a book. The sheer amount of jargon that is thrown at you, that's then subsequently explained (or worse, not explained at all, only to be gleaned from context 50 pages later) made this an extremely slow read. I was 3/4th the way into the book before I actually felt like the story moved beyond the introduction into the actual content. The final 80 pages or so are real page turners, after all of the excessive information has been saturated enough that you can understand what's going on. But the majority of the book is honestly quite the slog. I'd recommend this book if you have a lot of time on your hands and you like the Welsh.