This book took forever (months) to read. The prose is incredibly lush; you drown in run-on phrases choked with beautiful adjectives and long inserted quotes from imaginary writers. For me it was too much to take in any one sitting and so I had to dip into it, intermittently, as I would a book of poetry. It’s like sifting through hay to find the needle of the plot, but basically a book-smart spice merchant gets haunted by an illiterate ghost who needs him to write her life story; unfortunately, he has traveled to a country in which haunting is forbidden, and needs to find allies to help him finish his quest. For all the gorgeous descriptive writing the plot moved agonizingly slowly, not picking up till the very end.