Whiskey and Water by Elizabeth Bear

Sequel to Blood and Iron. Seven years after the dragon spread her wings over New York, assorted faeries, angels, devils, and mostly humans are, well, being told in a story again.

Huh, okay, this is damn peculiar. I like bits of this book a whole hell of a lot: there are a few dozen beats and lines that made me laugh or kicked me right in the chest. And there's angel genderfuckery. And there is the phrase "metatextual polycreationism." And it's dedicated to buymeaclue (the internet really is freaking tiny sometimes).

So there were little bits that just sang. But as a whole body? . . . no, not so much. And I don't really know why, either. Best guess: that annoying way the characters have of staring right into the camera all the time, even though it's stylistically fitting and one of the refrains – how these people have existence merely out of the power of story itself – ordains it. And also that the whole thing grows out of a particular soil of myth I'm really unfamiliar with, and the book didn't . . . get me through that, if you know what I mean. I was pulling for it, too. And it really should have, is what's annoying -- let's pause to note most decent fantasy novels do a fair bit of flexing to sell you on unfamiliar myth.

A good book for me. Probably a great book for someone out there who isn't me, but I'm having trouble thinking who that actually might be.