Though the writing felt staccato -almost tripping over itself - at times; even with this narrative tic I rushed through. The story, for all its obliqueness, is pretty linear, but the descriptions are perfect: the drowned cities, Venus/Venice a place of magic and nightmare, Furian an unlikely and unlikeable hero, and Eurydiche a flat and distressing damsel in distress.And yet and yet and yet, I swept through it, ate it up. While Eurydiche is not Lee's most interesting female creation, nor Furian her most interesting male, there's something about the way she paints the obsessive and revolting qualities of lust/love*, the dark movements of humans and the subtle press of the gods they worship, that keep me fascinated with her storytelling.Her human characters feel like beetles - pretty and scintillating-bright - but still just insects, crawling across the far more interesting character of her cities. Perhaps that's why I love her books. It's not about people, but about the way cities shape their people, and *that* fascinates me.*I am reminded of a lyric from MSP's Life Becoming a Landslide: "My idea of love comes from/ A childhood glimpse of pornography/ Though there is no true love/ Just a finely tuned jealousy."