I was so confused I opened up Chandrasekera’s The Saint of Bright Doors, wondering if maybe this word spaghetti was stylized or just how the author writes. Their prose is definitely on the long rambly side, but Bright Doors is readable and a more normal novel; Rakesfall is confusion turned up to 11 and incomprehensible to me. I love This Is How You Lose the Time War and was looking forward to something similar, but Rakesfall is too different from the synopsis and goes too far out of normal structure for me.