2.5 stars.
Ye olde story collection. I really enjoyed roughly the first third, with lots of one-upmanship, people morphing into animals, sorcerers and demons. (But no Aladdin.) I got a bit lost after that, as the stories got longer, the transformations less frequent, and following the many characters became more challenging. Took me a year and a half to read. In particular, the middle was very much a slog for me. Ideally, I would've read an abridged version, as it's an interesting book, just one that overstayed my attention span.