witty, elegant, sharp and bold, like a fine red wine…but strangely androcentric for a queer fantasy written by a lesbian author. The men all good for nothing, and hardly any women at all, as Austen once put it. Still, I’d consider the lack of significant female characters (with the possible exception of the Duchess Tremontaine) to be an odd choice on the author’s part, rather than a serious flaw in the work. I thoroughly reveled in it.