The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Boat of her own Making started life as a web fiction where Cathrynne Valente would publish episodes periodically, and the finished novel bears some of the marks of this genesis. In particular, I felt like it took her a while to find the voice she was using for this story.
At first, the novel struck me as too arch for its own good, not really sure if it's aimed at children or adults. There's a joke about the Wyverary's parentage that is not hugely appropriate for a children's book, or, more importantly, for the kind of children's book narrator that Valente is channeling here. (The narrator feels like she'd be at home in an early-20th-century British fairy tale, say, the Narnia stories. Not that Valente is aping Lewis, just that there's a feel to the voice.)
Fortunately, the style settles down about a third of the way in, and from there on out, I really enjoyed the novel. It's whimsical without being grating, which is a hard balance to pull off.
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