I really wanted to like this book more. I saw someone else write that this book is like reading a Bosch painting (which is startlingly accurate) and it intrigued me, but I just couldn't get into it. As much as I was clearly supposed to engage with the characters, there wasn't anybody that I was eager to follow through the story. The world building was interesting, and there was some really out there stuff, but overall this one just wasn't for me.

I wanted to let this one sit before I tried writing it up. Tldr this book is a hell of a trip, in all possible senses of the word. It’s like the experience of looking at a Bosch painting (which I’m reasonably sure is intentional, given direct references to Bosch in the text). At first glance, it seems fairly straightforward - a group of mercenaries hired to take a replacement oracle to its new home, a woman trying to recover her son and deal with her shitty ass husband, a monastery and the struggle between a brother and an Abbott. But as you look closer and deeper you see the weird fucking details of what’s going on - the steeping of the bones, the Woebegones, the oracle that came before the one en route, and you realize that you’re actually looking at a purgatory of sorts. There’s lots of gore in this, a more brutal look at vaguely Middle Ages. The trip is worth it - take a look when it comes out.